LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE JESUITS! 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 



OF 



P A IT L IF l6 "V .A. L 



BY 



AGNES L. SADLIER. 



lo.Ji &% 

/. 1879- ^ 

NEW YORK: 

D. & J. SADLIER & CO., PUBLISHERS, 

31 Barclay Street. 

montreal! 275 notre dame street. 

1878. 



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£**HAJ 



'"'CoitGJttBs 

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COPYRIGHT, 1878, BY 

D. & J. SADLIER & CO, 



Edward O. Jenkins, 

Printer and Stereotyper, 

20 North William SI., N. V. 



CONTENTS. 

Preface, 5 

I. 
The First Vow, 11 

II. 
The First Fathers, 55 

III. 
A Glance at the Missions, . . . . 87 

IV. 
France, 121 

V. 

POMBAL, . . . .162 

vi. 

A Brief Glance at Choiseul, D'Aranda, and 

Tanucci, . 214 

VII. 
A Last Word, ....... 259 



PREFACE 



For whom do I write this book ? 

I write it for those who have not yet assumed a de- 
cided stand ; for young men, for men of the world, 
and also for the large class of triflers, as I was for a 
long time myself, swaying, as it were, in a state of ir- 
resolute indifference, between error, which is not very 
patent to their sense, and truth, which they have no 
anxiety to learn. 

I know not if my book will be read, but I hope so. 

With some, the pernicious books which I have, un- 
happily, written, may serve as a passport for the pres- 
ent good work. In the case of others, malevolence 
will awaken a curiosity, for the pens of certain petty- 
scribblers have already accused me of having hazarded 
a speculation in returning to God. And, indeed, they 
are right. Oh, Lord, how grand a heritage I have won 
for myself, at one stroke, in prostrating myself before 
Thee! 

But I will not intone here the Canticle of the work- 
ings of grace within my heart ; it would take too long, 
and I have only a few lines in which to announce the 
object of my labor. I will merely say, in relation to 



6 Preface. 

this insinuation against my honor, that it is a real 
windfall — it will procure many readers. - 

For, in truth, is it not something amusing to behold 
an honest man, at a comparatively late hour of his life, 
wallowing in the mire of hypocrisy ? 

I calculate on this, and I hasten to take advantage 
of it, striking the iron while it is hot. 

This book, at least if the execution be not below 
the first idea, will be but the sketch of my great pict- 
ure, "The General History of the Jesuits," which I 
will achieve, if God grants me strength and life. 

I desire to fix in advance the principal lines, and to 
determine the perspectives. 

It will form but the bare outline, or, to speak liter- 
ally, a brief synopsis, since it will occupy but one 
volume, but affording such a view of the whole as, I 
hope, will bring into prominence certain principal facts 
which form the special theme of calumniators, and which 
have grown, as it were, into the legend of 'calumny. 

The point of admiration which marks my title prom- 
ises to give some importance to the perpetual "insult 
under which hate, for a period of three hundred years, 
has crushed and killed the Society of Jesus, which is 
perpetually resuscitated ; .it has seemed to me oppor- 
tune to choose, from among the "crimes" of its eter- 
nally accused members, the most glaring, in order to 
expose them under a quasi- dramatic form, before carry- 
ing the entire ca.se to a Court of Appeal. 



Preface. 7 

I remember to have read, in the writings of that 
unhappy writer, Gioberti, a page written with all the 
Italian emphasis, but full of eloquence and original 
thought, on which he compares, after the method of 
Plutarch, Ignatius of Loyola and Julius Caesar. Gio- 
berti uniformly gives the advantage to the founder of 
the Society of Jesus over the founder of the universal 
empire, in order to better demonstrate the pretended 
decline of the sons of Ignatius, together with the too 
evident decadence of the heirs of Caesar. 

I say nothing of the parallel in itself. I love neither 
Anagrams, nor Gnostics, nor Parallels. 

Caesar was a mighty soldier ; he crossed the Rubi- 
con. I know not if he left anything, save his military 
reputation, behind him ; Brutus assassinated him, and 
assassination is ever a crime. But I know that Igna- 
tius foimded something humble, which became great 
from its birth, and which has kept pace with time and 
change. 

I know that this has won to God forever, or, at 
least, for a time, the Indies, China, and America, 
millions of souls — hundreds of millions of souls — of 
whom many have been again drawn into error by the 
traitorous efforts of unbelievers and their commercial 
propaganda. 

I know that this has existed for three centuries, 
and in spite of the incessant effort made to crush it, 
the most potent means of education. 



8 Preface. 

I know that from its very birth this has been calum- 
niated, in the time of Pasquier, as in that of Pascal ; 
in the time of Voltaire, as in the time of Gioberti ; and 
our own time, and by the same slanderers ; inasmuch 
as the Church of Christ, owing to its immortality, ever 
arouses the same implacable hate and envenomed fury. 

That Church is an army " led by a Sovereign Pontiff, 
conducted by its thousand Bishops, flanked by its 
hundred Orders of Religious, among whom stands, in 
the first rank," * the Order of which we speak, founded 
by St. Ignatius, the Society which, "born in an age of 
struggles, is more than all others organized for the 
combat." 

" To struggle is the condition of its being, its merit 
before God, and its meaning in history." 

What struggle ? The struggle of Authority against 
Revolt, of Liberty against Oppression, of Order against 
Disorder, of Good against Evil ; the true, the grand, 
the only struggle. 

Furthermore, I know that the struggle is no less 
general, nor less desperate, to-day than in the sixteenth 
century. Now, as then, it is not only the Church, but 
society that is menaced ; and unquestionably, had 
epochs to be compared, we would find our time much 
more diseased, both in a political, religious, and social 



* Mgr. Frippel, "Religious, Historical, and Literary 
Studies." 



Preface. 9 

point of view, than were the times even of Luther and 
Calvin. 

I know that our nation, at the present epoch, has 
two pressing and vital needs — the need of knowing 
the obedience which gains battles, and of knowing 
again the God whom they have forgotten, which is 
victory itself. 

I have before my eyes the golden book wherein 
Father Emil Chauveau enumerates the children of St. 
Genevieve's school who died on the field of battle in 
our late disastrous struggle. 

Compared with the total number of pupils, the num- 
ber of the victims is truly and gloriously dispropor- 
tion ed. Every one has remarked that, and I am 
hippy to supplement the remark. 

Some will say, " That is chance." No. There is 
no such thing as chance. " Then, it is luck." Ah ! 
certainly, and the grace of God ; but be assured that 
such happiness as this comes not to him who stands 
idly waiting. It comes only to those hearts who seek 
for it. 

I repeat, that if our country is destroyed, it will re- 
sult from two causes : absence of religion and absence 
of discipline. 

We are a business people, and self-devotedness is 
not a business ; we are skeptical, and self-devotedness 
feeds on faith ; we are gay — gay to excess ; and self- 
devotedness, I assure you, will amuse none among the 



IO Preface. 

throng of maskers who exhale the double poison of ex- 
travagance and misery in the suffocating atmosphere 
of our halls of pleasure. 

I am aware of all this, and, therefore, I would nar- 
rate the history of the Jesuits, who exist by religion, 
and thorough discipline, in absolute devotedness, en- 
deavoring to merit thus the happiness and the great 
honor of losing my worldly reputation in the torrents 
of hate which ever sweep against this glorious title, 
the dread of the enemies of God. 



THE FIRST VOW. 

Day had not yet dawned on the Festival of the As- 
sumption in the year 1534, when a lame man, who, in 
spite of his infirmity, moved with a rapid and ener- 
getic step, might have been seen passing along the 
street of Saint Jacques, in the University quarter of 
the city of Paris. Although, to judge by his appear- 
ance, the stranger had reached middle life, he was at- 
tired in the dress which distinguished the poor scholars 
of the University ; but in place of the ink-horn which 
they generally wore suspended from their side, he had 
only a rosary. 

A stout cord, passed under his much-worn hooded 
cloak, sustained a cloth wallet; much better armor 
for a night-traveler in Paris than if he had been pro- 
vided with a sword or cane ; for the evil-disposed will 
hardly attack mendicants. 

As the stranger reached the parapet of the deserted 
bridge, the clock of Saint Chapelle rang out the hour 
of three. 

He turned his eyes across the winding Seine, bor- 
dered by the houses deep in shadow, and saluted with 

(11) 



12 The Jesuits. 

the sign of the cross the massive pile of Notre Dame. 
As yet the approach of day is unannounced by even 
the faintest glimmer. It is the hour when all Paris 
sleeps, whether it be the sixteenth century or the 
nineteenth. 

He passed through the network of narrow streets 
which intersected the market, without encountering a 
living soul, until he reached the gate of Montmatre, 
situated in the vicinity of what is now the Rue du 
Mail ; the new street of St. Eustache having its first 
houses built a little later on the outward winding 
road, of which it still preserves the tortuous outline. 
The barrier was closed. The sentry demanded, 
"Where are you going?" 

The lame man answered, "I am going to the 
chapel of Saint Martyr, to celebrate the feast of the 
Mary Immaculate." 

Thq chapel of Saint Martyr, of which the crypt still 
exists in the Rue Marie Antoinette, was situated imme- 
diately under the parish church of Montmatre, and 
occupied the exact site of the altar of Mars, where 
Saint Denis, patron of Paris, was dragged and mar- 
tyred with his two companions, Rusticus and Eleu- 
therius, on the 9th of October, 272, for having refused 
to offer sacrifice in the temple of Mercury, god of 
thieves, merchants, etc., and a whole category of other 
men for whom no language affords an appropriate 
name. 



The First Vow. 13 

The guard answered, "You will have to wait a 
long time for the first mass. Take the way on your 
right, the main road is obstructed by the laborers who 
work at the swamp of Por onerous." 

The brook of Menelmontant, or Porcherous, which 
now flows underground, at that time crossed the high- 
way leading to Montmatre, at the point of our Rue du 
Provence. In the summer season its waters became 
stagnant, causing pestilence. 

The lame man took the road De Poissonnius, 
crossing on his way the thickets where the eighteenth 
century was to establish a whole town of philosophic 
institutions under the name of "New France," and 
reached Montmatre from the eastern side, through the 
fields which extended from the village of the Chapelle 
St. Denis, and the hamlet of Clegnancourt, to the 
place called Fontanelle, and also Goutte d'Eau, or, as 
popular usage has made it, Goutte d'Or. . 

Dawn had not yet appeared ; but the moon, sink- 
ing toward the horizon, shed its fading gleams upon 
the surrounding country, revealing where the spire of 
the abbey built by Suger arose in the center of the 
plain, against the dark hills of Montmorency, facing 
the four round towers of the noble house of Saint 
Ouen, from whose belfry now all the bells were ring- 
ing simultaneously, because its masters, the Knights 
of the Star, according to the obligation laid upon 
them by their founder, King John, in 135 1, were 



14 The Jesuits. 

compelled to hold their yearly full Chapter in mid- 
August, from noon till the evening of the following day. 

Our crippled traveler, although he now carried a 
wallet, had formerly been a knight himself; but he had 
long since abandoned the world and its glories, and it 
was not for him that the bells of the noble house were 
ringing. He was destined tg -found an eminent eccle- 
siastical Order, more enduring than that of King 
John's. 

It was by the path cut through Fontanelle that he 
gained the summit of Montmatre. 

The night still lingered. Having arrived at the 
culminating point occupied by the church-yard, be- 
hind the apsis of the parish church, on the very spot 
where now rest the foundations of the basilica vowed 
by France to the Sacred Heart, he paused fatigued, 
and looked about him intently, murmuring, " I am first 
at the rendezvous." 

He took his repose neither sitting nor lying down, 
but prostrate, reciting his rosary. Silence reigned on 
this exposed elevation, over which the soft summer- 
night wind gently passed. One heard there no sounds 
of life. 

A few scattered houses to the right and left of the 
church, which formed the suburbs of the village of 
Montmatre, still lay wrapped in slumber. 

Nothing was visible on the ridge of the slope be- 
tween the prostrate student and the wall of the ceme- 



The First Vow. 15 

tery only some dark and immovable objects; appar- 
ently the stones which had lain scattered in these 
fields since the time of the Druids. 

The church - clock struck four, and presently the 
abbey chimes called to the matin office. 

Then one of the seeming stones moved and stood 
up ; then two, then all. They were six, and the lame 
student, rising in his turn, exclaimed : " God be 
praised ; I thought myself the first, and I was the last." 

The rising sun revealed six young men gathered 
about an older student, who bore the air of a master in 
the midst of his disciples. 

The term " student," by which we have introduced 
him, will no longer serve to distinguish him ; for all 
the others, save one, who wore the garb of a priest, were 
attired like him, in the dress peculiar to the poor stu- 
dents who followed the course of the University of 
Paris. 

The priest only had the appearance of a French- 
man ; all the others, including the cripple, bore on 
their dark-complexioned countenances the impress of 
the Spanish race, which then shared with us the em- 
pire of the world. 

Francis the First was king ; Charles the Fifth, em- 
peror ; Columbus had just discovered an unknown 
half of the earth. 

Alexander Farnese, under the name of Paul III., 
had succeeded Leo X., on the throne of St. Peter. 



16 The Jesuits. 

In the year 1534 Luther had attained his fiftieth 
year ; Calvin his thirty-third. The lame student, whose 
wallet, as the daylight permitted to be seen between the 
fibers of the coarse cloth of which it was composed, 
was filled with crusts of begged bread, was forty-seven 
years of age. 

But why, however, announce the age of this cripple, 
with that of Luther and Calvin ? 

Because this poor, obscure man was more powerful 
and prolific of good, though alone, than they, though 
united, were terrible and prolific of evil. 

His name was Ignatius of Loyola. One could see 
that he had been a soldier. An expression of indom- 
itable courage mingled with the humility of his con- 
version. 

But he was a thinker; and his features bore the clear 
and commanding expression peculiar to men who are 
predestined to accomplish great objects. 

Something of the eagle he bore in his profile, of 
which the proud lines hardly reflected to the full ex- 
tent the sweetness which, by God's help, had over- 
flowed a heart agitated by the fever of war, until the 
light breaking in, had confounded it. Although his 
face bore the impress of a noble and generous charac- 
ter, it was in the eyes, especially, that the exceeding 
beauty of his soul was expressed ; his look at once 
awed and attracted, because he possessed at once 
power and tenderness. 



The First Vow. 17 

Thirteen years had passed since the bloody night 
after the siege of Pampeluna, when he was found con- 
quered, though victorious, after having struggled for 
twelve hours with lion-like courage. 

These Loyolas, lords of Ognez, were of Cantabrian 
origin, and as true in combat as the steel of their 
sword. Ignatius, the heroic captain, formerly a page 
of King Ferdinand, young, ambitious, proud, and be- 
loved, revolted against the will of God which nailed 
him to a sick-bed, almost within sound of the battle. 

It is said that he asked those who served him to get 
him some romances which might serve to divert his 
mind, and they brought him the histories of the mar- 
tyrs, and among others, the acts of the first, of the 
greatest of the martyrs, " The Passion of our Lord." 

There is a tradition in Guipuzcoa that Ignatius was 
then deeply attached to a beautiful and wealthy young 
girl, who had been promised to him in marriage. 

When he had finished reading the Passion of our 
Lord as related by St. John, he took her beloved im- 
age from his heart, and pressing to his lips a medal 
of the Blessed Virgin, he vowed his soul to the free 
service of the faith, and his body to the chastity of our 
divine Lord, saying : " Behold me the knight of the 
true love, and the soldier of the only glory." 

The lives of the saints will not serve as exact 
models for those in the world. Each state has its 



1 8 The Jesuits. 

peculiar degree of sanctity. The saints who renounce 
all are the laborers of God who owe to Him their en- 
tire day of work. 

Those who remain in the world are bound to fulfill 
their duty toward God, without neglecting that which 
they owe to the world. 

Ignatius, not wishing to share his work, quitted the 
world, and constituted himself one of God's workmen, 
long before binding himself thereto by a public or 
solemn profession. 

He began the work of voluntary detachment from 
all earthly things, by abandoning to the poor all his 
goods, and by living in solitude to break his most 
tender attachments. 

It was his " call to arms ; " we must not forget that 
it was a soldier who was entering upon the apostolate. 

Having bidden a final farewell to the glory of war, 
which had been his profession and his passion, to the 
love of his betrothed, to the house of his father, to his 
beloved family and dear friends, he departed with 
tearful eyes, but a strong heart. On the road he 
parted not with half of his cloak, like the apostle of 
charity, St. Martin, but bestowed it entire, together 
with all his clothes and his horse. 

But he reserved the last sacrifice of parting with his 
sword, until he reached the goal of his pilgrimage, the 
monastery of Mount Serrat, situate near Manresa in 
Catalonia, where he suspended it from a pillar. 



The First Vow. 19 

In this monastery he made a general confession 
which occupied three days ; after which, clothed 
in sackcloth, he returned to the famous grotto where 
were granted him his first ecstatic revelations, in the 
intervals of journeys which he made on foot to some 
distance, despite his hardly-cured wounds, to beg alms 
for the poor. . 

Here he wrote his great work, " Manresa ; or, Spir- 
itual Exercises," and the plan of his Constitutions, 
which may be called the entire work of his eventful 
life. 

In this solitude he saw something more : the neces- 
sity of being a man of science, in order to teach truth 
and combat falsehood. 

But before taking his place, he, the renowned cap- 
tain of yesterday, on the benches of a school, desired 
to quench the thirst which devoured him to press his 
lips on the tomb of our Saviour. 

Afoot, penniless, he set out ; obtained, by the help 
of God, passage on a ship bound from Barcelona to 
Rome, where, having kissed the feet of the Holy 
Father Adrian VI. , he once more took up his staff, 
traveled through Italy, begging his bread, and em- 
barked at Venice in a galley which landed him in the 
Isle of Cyprus. 

From thence he went to Jaffa, and reached the Holy 
City, after a journey that occupied a year. 

But here, if it were not for a fortunate obstacle in- 



20 The Jesuits. 

terposed by Providence, his future mission would 
never have been accomplished ; for the land pressed 
by the sacred feet of our Lord, held for him so pow- 
erful an attraction, that he resolved there to live and 
die ; but the delegate of the Holy See, who had au- 
thority over the pilgrims, ordered him to return to Eu- 
rope, and Ignatius, having watered for the last time, 
with his tears, the traces of the sacred footprints of 
our Redeemer, on Djebet Jor, made at the blessed 
hour of His Ascension, obeyed. 

Seven months later, he was entered as a scholar in 
the lowest class of the University of Barcelona. 

Persecuted for the miracle of his piety, which was 
judged to be sorcery, and several times imprisoned ; 
pursued from Barcelona to Salamanca by persecution ; 
and opposing nothing to injustice but silence and 
resignation, he at length quitted Spain, and took the 
road to Paris, whose University was the first in the 
world. 

At the time of his arrival in France, during the first 
month of the year 1528, Ignatius, born in 1491, was 
consequently 36 years old. He had the courage to 
re-commence the study of his humanities in the College 
of Montague, at Saint Barbara ; and notwithstand- 
ing the obstacles which his practical piety, the depth 
of his meditations, and the apostleship which he had 
already begun to exercise, he made some progress ; 
but persecution had pursued him across the Pyrenees. 



The First Vow. 21 

It happened that a Professor of Saint Barbara, John 
Pena, accused him, not of being a sorcerer, as they 
had done in Spain, but of drawing off the attention of 
the students from their studies by means of the mys- 
tical reveries in which he indulged, for which he was 
sentenced to receive public chastisement in the grand 
hall of the College. 

Ignatius submitted with such humility to the sen- 
tence that the Rector was rilled w r ith astonishment, 
and resolved to interrogate the culprit himself. 

Ignatius replied to the interrogatory the same as he 
had accepted the sentence. Meanwhile the rumor 
was speedily circulated that there was to be an example 
of public chastisement. 

Owing to the perfection of his life, Ignatius was not 
popular among the majority of the students ; so this 
was hailed as welcome news. 

A numerous throng was assembled in the grand hall, 
where the punishment was to be administered, testi- 
fying all the impatience of spectators at a theatre for 
the rising of the curtain, when at length the Rector 
appeared. 

He held, or rather drew, Ignatius after him by the 
hand. 

Thus he passed along the cruel and curious ranks, 
the accused following him, pale as death, with down- 
cast eyes. 

In the center of the hall the Rector paused, and to 



22 The Jesuits. 

the intense astonishment of all present, his eyes were 
full of tears. 

For a moment he remained silent, apparently over- 
come by his emotion ; then suddenly pressing Ignatius 
to his heart (others say he fell on his knees), he ex- 
claimed : " Not only has he been falsely accused 
without complaining, but he has joyfully submitted, in 
recompense for the good he has been able to accom- 
plish, to the opprobrium of an unjust punishment ! I 
have seen the conscience of a saint, and I show it to 
you.'' 

Until then the least malevolent among the com- 
panions of Ignatius had turned into ridicule all the 
efforts he made to draw souls to God. The role of 
director of consciences assumed by this stranger, who 
lived on the charity of passers-by, and who had not 
even acquired a single degree in literature, letters, or 
the sciences, seemed nothing short of presumption ; 
but after the incident which we have just related, he 
appeared in a new light, and many souls were attracted 
toward him. 

Of these Ignatius repulsed none, but those whom 
he confided in were few. 

The reader may be astonished to learn that he was 
now engaged in an important selection in the midst 
of his contemplative life ; he was choosing those who 
one day were to be Jesuits. 

The first chosen was an ingenuous young man, of 



The First Vow. 23 

simple and unaffected manner, by name Peter Lefevre. 
He had also journeyed as a pilgrim from the depths 
of Savoy in order to enter Holy Orders, and was 
already celebrated for his learning. Ignatius was at 
once his master and his disciple; his master in the 
faith — his disciple in all which concerned study ; and 
thanks to the assistance of this friendly guide, the 
difficulties of Ignatius' scholastic path were speedily 
overcome. He became Master of Arts, * and was 
shortly admitted into the class of Theology. 

Lefevre was strongly attached to a student of his own 
age, Francis Xavier, belonging to an impoverished, 
but noble family of Navarre, possessing an ardent 
heart, brilliant eloquence, and sparkling wit, but 
entirely devoted to earthly ambition. 

Ignatius resolved to convert him ; and the argu- 
ments which are put into his mouth by historians 
remind one of the evangelists: " Xavier, what will it 
serve you to gain the universe and lose your soul ? 
If there were no other ife than the present, no other 
glory than the glory of this world, you would be right 
to dream only of how to become great among men ; 
but since there is an eternity, why do you limit your 
desires to this world ? why do you prefer that which 
passes to that which never ends ? " 

Ignatius had hard work to gain this soul, but it was 
a grand conquest. 

Neither Lefevre nor Xavier yet knew that they were 



24 The Jesuits. 

destined to be enrolled as captains in that army which, 
as yet, lacked soldiers. Until this moment, Ignatius 
had breathed his thought to none save God. 

The third and fourth recruit arrived together from 
Spain, with the intention of attaching themselves to 
the Society of Ignatius, who, without his own seeking, 
had already acquired renown. 

These, James Laynez and Antonio Salmeron, the 
latter of whom was still very young, were received with 
open arms ; the first glance of the master had observed 
on their youthful faces the impress of genius. 

Then came Alphonso, of the town of Bobadilla, and 
the Portuguese, Rodriquez Azevedo. 

All these chosen six were poor, living by charity, 
with the exception of Xavier, who lectured on Phi- 
losophy. 

But Ignatius already assumed the place of a father to 
this family, tenderly w T atching over their welfare. 

And though he revealed nothing of his projects, 
unconsciously they grew to expect great things of 
him. 

Lef evre was ordained priest. Soon after this event, 
Ignatius sought retirement and solitude for contempla- 
tion. 

But even without the aid of words, a similar cur- 
rent of thought appeared to pass between his friends' 
hearts and his, although they presumed not to question 
him. 



The First Vow. 25 

One day, however, Xavier asked him : " Have you 
nothing to say to us ? " 

And Ignatius embraced him with tearful eyes, but 
answered nothing. 

At length, on the thirteenth of August, two days 
before the Assumption, he ordered all to fast and go 
to confession upon the day following ; then bidding 
Lefevre to repair beforehand to the Abbey, and make 
preparations for a mass to be said in the crypt of Saint 
Martyr on the morning of the fifteenth of August, he 
added : " Come, all of you, to the summit of Mont- 
matre before daybreak, to the field behind the church, 
near the cemetery. I will be there, and I will speak 
to you." 

Those who were gathered about Ignatius of Loyola 
that morning at the meeting-place were Lefevre, Fran- 
cis Xavier, James Laynez, Antonio Salmeron, Nicholas 
Alonzo of Bobadilla, and Simon Rodriquez d'Azeve- 
do, the first of whom was a priest ; the others only 
students. All were to have a share, unequal it is true, 
in the glory of their master. 

The oldest, Lefevre, was twenty-four years of age ; 
the youngest, Salmeron, had hardly attained his eight- 
eenth year. 

Ignatius kept his promise to its full extent ; he spoke 

in the midst of those chosen souls, who listened eagerly. 

The grand memories of the Apostle of the Gauls 



26 The Jesuits. 

still lingered about this spot, where the living God had 
replaced the idols of paganism, hurled to the earth. 
For, in the distance, arose the royal spire of St. Denis, 
silvered by the first rays of the rising sun, which hardly 
caressed the humble church of Montmatre, once the 
temple of Mercury, but now purified and baptized by 
the blood of martyrs. 

As far as the eye could reach, it met nothing to dis- 
turb the solitude. 

Paris, awaking from slumber, lay wrapped in mist, 
and the only sound which broke the stillness was that 
of the church bells announcing the glory of Mary, 
alike to those who still loved, and whose hearts had 
learned to forget her. 

Paris was far removed from Montmatre in those 
days, and though already deemed a grand city, merely 
consisted of a confused mass of buildings, in the center 
of the plain, rising against the dark towers of Notre 
Dame. 

It terminated on the east in the gardens of Saint 
Paul, widely separated from the Bastile, which resem- 
bled, with its wheel-shaped towers, a mighty chariot 
bearing down upon the turret of Vincennes, on the 
west ; it ended at the Louvre toward the south, in the 
inclosure of Saint Germain des Pres, on the north 
side, within some hundred steps of St. Eustache, and 
nothing indicated that it would presently stretch so far 
beyond its existing limits. 



The First Vow. 27 

All this was faintly outlined through the fog of Paris 
which no wind stirred, and through which the gilded 
crosses of the churches caught a mysterious gleam of 
light. 

All seemed calm ; but an indefinable menace 
seemed to lurk beneath the repose. 

Ignatius spoke; 'tis duty compels him so to do; 
what will he say ? Those who will listen may still 
hear his words even at this lapse of time ; he repeated 
them in his work, and his writings have immortalized 
them. 

When he had exchanged the Christian salutation 
with his companions, he paused and collected his 
thoughts in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost. 

And through the open windows of the church, came, 
clear and sweet, the chant of the Religious, sounding 
the praises of the Lord. 



" You are impatient, children, because you' have had 
to wait some days for what I have awaited in patience 
fourteen years. 

"Yes, fourteen years I have watched alternately 
heaven and earth, seeking to learn what Heaven in- 
tends for this age, and what the age meditates against 
Heaven. 

" The present time will occupy a prominent page in 



28 The Jesuits. 

history. Peace to those whose names shall not re-echo 
amid these stormy times ; all of ours shall be recorded 
therein, those of some in blood. 

" Selim and Soliman have alternately menaced Eu- 
rope ; the Crescent rules Rhodes, where no longer floats 
the standard of Jerusalem. 

"We have seen Christians offer up prayers for the 
Turk ; we have seen kings conspiring for the sub- 
version of their thrones, and in the midst of the aston- 
ishment excited by these events, a voice is heard 
from Rome, denouncing the corruption of the cloister, 
and the falsehood practiced beneath the shadow of the 
altar ! What can henceforth be to us a cause of sur- 
prise ? Where will the chastisement end ? What is 
the will of God ? Who can comprehend the language 
of His righteous indignation ? 

"Behold the apostate Luther, in whom is concen- 
trated the brutishness of genius, the slavery of a mind 
enchained by the senses, the appetite of an ogre, the 
strength of a bull, and the rapacity of a wolf; a pro- 
found shame, but a striking lesson ; crying to the world 
that heresy is not the rebellion of reason, but the eleva- 
tion of flesh. 

"At his voice the greedy German arises and inaugu- 
rates a course of sacrilege, robbery, and murder. There 
the princes head the tumults among the people, who 
will trample underfoot the crowns of their rulers. 

" In ravaging the cathedrals they show them how 



The First Vow. 29 

to demolish the palaces. They will profit by the 
lesson. 

" Hell openly triumphs ! It is the orgie of the beast 
in human shape, who accuses the Blessed Virgin of 
impurity, and the true God of falsehood ; they reject 
the Mass, that is to say, Jesus Christ ; these men who 
call themselves Christians, and more than Christians, 
since they pretend to reform Christianity, by over- 
throwing the Altar of the insulted Christ, and His dis- 
honored Mother. 

" Behold the reformers, one armed against the other, 
all mutually accusing one another of perfidy, the only 
point on which they are not mistaken ; behold the 
men engaged in this tournament of impiety ; Carl- 
stadt, who kills the souls of infants by depriving them 
of baptism ; Munzer, the furious leveler, who finds 
in the falsified Gospel the justification of theft ; the 
confusion of mine and thine, and the ancient folly of 
the sharing of earthly goods ; John of Leyden, the 
caricature of a prophet, who preached the common- 
alty of all, even of women ; he, the masterpiece of 
Satan, who, in him, burlesques royalty, the priesthood, 
and even martyrdom ; behold Zwinglius, the austere 
maniac, of whom Calvin appropriates to himself the 
heritage ; . . . . but how, remember, or what, imports 
the names ? All is hypocrisy, blasphemy, pillage, 
ravage, and carnage ; time put in the place of eter- 
nity ; a harvest of sounding words justifying the base- 



30 The Jesuits. 

ness of men and the ignominy of things ; such is the 
Reformation, red with wine and blood, a leprosy under 
the guise of a remedy, 

" The Turks deceive no one ; for the Turks are bar- 
barians, deluded by a false prophet ; they have denied 
nothing ; but Luther, Carlstadt, Munzer, Zwinglius 
and John of Leyden, have known Jesus, and betrayed 
Him ; they have sacrificed Him to their interest, to 
their immoderate thirst of power, of renown, of the 
enjoyments of this world — and of their own free will ; 
they have constituted themselves the apostles of pride, 
the ministers of the Enemy of Mankind. 

"And the enemy plays with these his tools, and 
amuses himself by introducing into the midst of horror 
some sinister nonsense which recalls the days when the 
Lower Empire mocked its own awful situation. 

" Christiern maizes of his barber a prelate ; Henry 
VIII., the knight of the axe, between the assassinations 
of two queens, finds time to write pamphlets, wherein 
he calls Rome a harlot, because Rome refuses to 
whiten the nuptial bed which he has prostituted and 
steeped in blood. 

" For they are all the same ; each of these Reformers 
accuses the Church of the very crime which he has 
notably committed ; evil drags the good to judgment, 
with clamors of indignation ; the assassin shrieks mur- 
der ; the robber, theft. Judas denounces treason, and 
Henry VIII. is scandalized. The latter dips the pen 



The First Vow. 31 

of the former advocate of the Faith, into the mingled 
blood of women and priests, and finds religion calum- 
ny, from the fatigues of the executioner. 

" Does the evil end here ? We are in France, and 
Paris is at our feet. Will this oldest daughter of the 
Church shield her mother from the menaces which as- 
sail her on all sides ? It may be. I hope it ! But 
you are like myself, the children of the University of 
Paris, the pride of science and the honor of letters ; 
you have heard, like me, those vague sounds at first so 
faint — something keen, but furtive as the hissing of the 
serpent in the grass — and which goes on from year to 
year augmenting, until it resembles the menacing voice 
of an approaching tempest. 

" Here we have not yet attained the shameful level of 
the sectaries beyond the Rhine ; Paris is no haunt of 
Free-Lancers, and the burlesque exhibition of Wart- 
bourg, when the intoxicated Luther converses with the 
devil, as, of old, Moses did with God, satisfies only the 
Germans. We are not yet stricken with the awful 
convulsions which afflict the tyrants of the North, 
whose pagan soil so long resisted the rock of the 
Cross, and where it is ever tottering ; still less are we 
acquainted with the uncompromising arithmetic of the 
London traders, by which they calculate how far their 
interests might be served by the fact of possessing in 
their midst a Pope entirely their own, sharing with 
them the patrimony of the Church ; at once b^ing pro- 



32 The Jesuits. 

fessor, procreator, and Sovereign Pontiff, wielding the 
scepter, the censer, and the axe, in a hand as able at 
the desk of the pedant, as at the block of the execu- 
tioner ; English enough to institute an English faith as 
such baptized under the name of Anglicanism, an En- 
glish morality, an English modesty, and an English 
truth, as of old the merchants proper of Carthage invent- 
ed a Punic faith. These things satisfy only the English. 

" In order to attract France, other sophistries must be 
brought into requisition, and above all, more caution 
used in the manner of presenting them. 

" She will insist upon the appearance of examination, 
the seeming of logic, and some plaything with which 
she can amuse herself by giving it the name of liberty. 

" Being the most powerful and most impetuous of 
the nations, France will, perhaps, lose herself most 
completely amid the mazes of political wanderings, 
because the strength of fevers is ever proportionate to 
the generosity of the temperament, but as yet she has 
not entered upon this perilous way ; so far her spiritual 
good sense has revolted at the grossness of the allure- 
ments which heresy holds out to her. 

" But the character, the beloved and commanding 
character of the French, has its peculiar temptations. 

" There is woman, there is vice, there is the intoxica- 
tion of the art of writing and of speaking. 

". ... It is woman who will open to the plague 
the doors of France. ^ 



The First Vow. 33 

" The sister of the king, ' La Marguerite des Mar- 
gueritis,' shields and fosters that viper of vipers, the 
workman truly strong in evil, who lectures on heresy, its 
philosophic mask, and its disguise of moderation ; John 
Calvin, who has already reformed Luther, and who 
will be in turn reformed by a thousand others — for the 
history of Protestantism may be comprised in one line, 
or rather in one word, Reform, that is to say, revolt ; 
reformation of reformation, revolt against revolt, 
heresy within heresy, an array of schisms crossing 
and multiplying within the schisms, like a profusion 
of noxious weeds in the field of the bad laborer 

" I have promised to build a chapel (do not be as- 
tonished, w r e shall build many, and churches, too) on 
the very spot in Paris where was committed against 
the Blessed Virgin the first Lutheran profanation. It 
took place under my eyes, in the Rue Saint Antoine, 
and you will recognize the spot by seeing dug there 
the foundations of the sanctuary. 

" The sacrilegious horde was conducted thither by a 
page in the livery of the Duchess d'Elampis, the friend 
of the king, she who, too, reforms not indeed her im- 
pure life, but the ancient honor of her race, by selling 
her treason and betraying her deceived king to the in- 
trigues of England. 

" Through the medium of these two women, seated 
upon the very steps of the throne, and on whom God 
3 



34 The Jesuits. 

has so abundantly showered His gifts, error is propa- 
gated throughout France. 

" The schools swarm with impious books ; the first 
printed blasphemy of Calvin has been sent, in gilt 
binding, to her who can so easily insinuate it even into 
the private apartment of the king. Thanks to his im- 
portunities, the king has made Nicholas Cop a rector 
of the University of Paris, and on the last feast of All 
Saints this master of Calvin, now become his disciple, 
thanked the king for this mark of preference by publicly 
preaching rebellion, not only against the Vatican, but 
even against the Louvre 

" Is this the extent of the evil ? Alas ! No. This 
year even, Calvin, who lacks the personal bravery of 
Luther, and before whose eyes his tortured conscience 
unceasingly evokes the specter of personal danger, fled 
from Paris. Where does he take refuge ? At the court 
of Nerac, nigh Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre ! 
And from thence he endeavors to transport error in- 
to Catholic Spain ! while on the other side, the poison 
generated in Switzerland and traversing Savoy, pene- 
trated into Piedmont, always hostile toward the Holy 
See ; it is propagated by Renee, Duchess of Ferrara, 
daughter of Louis XII., whose extravagant fondness 
for Calvin almost equals that of Marguerite de Valois 
herself, and who joins hands with Jean Valdez, the 
favorite of the Viceroy of Naples, whose emissaries in- 
sinuate themselves even into Rome 



The First Vow. 35 

"There, in the Eternal City, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, 
seated upon his deserted throne, with supplicating 
hands raised toward heaven, sees the deluge steadily 
rising, submerging all parts of the world with a tide of 
error, and rushing from all parts of the horizon, to 
invade the heart of Catholicism, the last bulwark of 
Faith, Authority, and Truth. 

" I have told you nothing new, good reader ; the 
evil is so glaring that one may even see it with closed 
eyes, as the light of a mighty conflagration penetrates 
through the shut lids. 

" What I would show you is the number and strength 
of the battalions leagued against the Faith. Never has 
such an assembly of mankind joined forces against it. 

" Will the faith, however, be vanquished ? It can 
not be. 

"Who will defend it? Jesus Christ. 

" Where is the army of Jesus ? At Rome and in 
France. 

" Is the army of Rome numerous ? No. 

" Is it strong ? Yes. 

" And the army of France ? It is here ; count it. 

" Six young men and a cripple, who to-morrow 
will be an old man ; seven souls in all. 

" The army of France contains only one Frenchman ; 
do not despise it, for in it, and by it, God will accom- 
plish great things. 

" Whilst you have waited for me to speak, reproach- 



36 The Jesuits. 

ing my silence, the humility of my prayer* has vouch- 
safed me the grace of reading the future. I have read 
our history in the secret of Jesus. God accepts us for 
His soldiers. He has shown me the immense battle- 
field, where another standard marches against His. I 
have seen it. I have seen the entire world descend 
into the arena ; I have seen you ; I have seen my- 
self. .... 

" I do not question you to know whether it be your 
will to combat. To what purpose ? I know that your 

will abandons itself to the will of God And I 

know that you are the \ associates of Jesus,' you will 
bear this name ; understand me, you do not take it ; 
God gives it you " 

61 You will have hours of triumph so grand that jealous 
hate will arise about you like a whirlwind, that it will 
be stirred to its depth like the fuming and boiling water 
which tempers the red-hot iron. 

" And you will have reverses so terrible, that your 
enemies will place their feet upon what they believe 
to be your corpse. 

" Then, you will not strike, and nevertheless they 
will be overthrown You will never strike. 

" Your precept is, not to strike ; and by this pre- 
cept you will conquer. 

"What is the name of the enemy? Revolt. 

"Where is Revolt? In heresy, which is error. 



The First Vow. 37 

" How combat revolt and heresy ? By the Author- 
ity which is the Truth. 

" Where are authority and the truth ? In the 
Church, together with liberty, which is the right of liv- 
ing and dying according to the law of God, in order 
to be born again in the glory of God. 

" Is the Church attacked ? Yes, on all sides. 

" Does the Church need to be defended ? The 
Church herself, no ; for she is assured of living by the 
promise of Jesus Christ. But, yes, in the interest of 
what is not the Church, and especially in the interest 
of the actual enemies of the Church, who must either 
return to her fold or die, since beyond the Church 
there is no salvation. 

"We do not wish them to be lost. 

" How then to defend the Crmrch ; that is to say, 
the possibility of salvation for those who do not know 
the Church, and for those who persecute the Church? 

" By opposing obedience to revolt, self-abnegation 
to egotism, the freedom of sacrifice to the slavery of 
covetousness which can never be satiated ; in a word, 
by making Christians. 

" How shall these Christians be made ? By the 
Word of Jesus Christ recalled to the minds of men, 
and taught to children and to infidels. 

" The reign of brute force will never end ; the sword 
shall be supplanted by the cannon, only until some 



38 The Jesuits. 

force more mighty still shall hurl the cannon to the 
dust ; but besides these inert powers which blindly 
serve the justice of God and the perversity of men, 
there is another power which is named intellect. 

" It does not date from yesterday, since the Gospel 
is fifteen hundred years old, but this age in which we 
live begins to scatter written and spoken opinions as 
food for the appetite of the many. 

" In itself this is good ; only error, ever watchful, 
taking the lead of the unsuspecting good, makes use 
of this as a tool with which to rebuild, under other 
names, the Hebrew idol and the altar of false gods. 

" It is vitally necessary to combat this treason of 
perverted knowledge against ignorance, which can not 
defend itself. 

"We will not be the warriors of the sword, but of 
the Word ; we will preach to men ; we will teach 
children ; we will make Christians by precept and by 
education. 

" I, who have been taught by all of you, and who 
possess the least knowledge among you, have at least 
the science of the humble, and you have chosen me to 
direct your hearts, if not your intelligences, far superior 
to mine. Why ? Because you have seen my con- 
science, where is visible only the name of Jesus burn- 
ing like a torch. 

" I have studied at Barcelona, at Salamanca, at 
Alcala, and above all at Paris ; what have I learnt ? 



The First Vow. 39 

The language of doubt, but that there was no longer 
room for doubt within me. Jesus filled my soul to 
overflowing, and the distrust of men has only aug- 
mented my confidence in God. 

" I have admired the eloquent and the learned ; I 
have drunk in the poetry and philosophy which flowed 
from their lips, and from the depths of my soul I have 
repeated the prayer to my Father in heaven taught 
by the Man-God himself to His Apostles. It contains 
the infinite poetry and the eternal philosophy. 

" I have heard Buchanan, the eminent poet ; the pro- 
found Latomus ; the renowned genius, Gombaut ; the 
universal William Bude ; Danes, and his master, Las- 
caus, who could converse with Plato in the pure lan- 
guage of Homer ; Ramus, so acute in discerning the 
traces of the decaying genius of Aristotle, and so in- 
capable of seeing his own weaknesses ; they spoke 
commandingly, all these grand intellects ; but above 
their sonorous voices I heard the voice of God, which 
told me to believe, to hope, to love, and to abandon 
my soul to the miracle of His mercy. 

"And I loved, I hoped, and I believed each day 
still more; tasting the joys of faith, even in the midst 
of the most presumptuous denials of it ; appreciating 
the more the happiness of hope, as I listened to the 
skillful arguments advanced to discourage it ; and 
sending to the heavens a canticle of joy &bove the 
lamentations of hate. 



40 The Jesuits. 

" For all blasphemy is a cry of agony, extorted by 
the torture of remorse ! . . . . 

" Since the thrice -blessed hour when God visited 
me on my sick-bed, I have been seeking my way, the 
road which will conduct me to the end so passionately 
desired ; the greater glory of God, that is to say, 
1 the greater salvation of mankind/ 

" On this road, my thought has had three stopping- 
places. 

" In my grotto of Manresa, I devoted myself to alms- 
giving and prayer, the powerful means which consti- 
tuted the arms of the first solitaries. I was yet in 
ignorance of the malady which afflicts our age ; never- 
theless, something murmured within me, ' This is not 
enough/ 

" The Mother of Jesus, whom I unceasingly im- 
plored, inspired me with the need I felt to visit 
Calvary. All the length of my voyage I heard a 
furious menace made of the name of Luther. 

" The desire of the combat was born within me. 

" This was the second station of my journey. 

" And the combat of which I speak was even the 
one that I have but now defined ; the combat which 
is now without blows, and which is fought only for the 
happiness of the adversary — the supernatural combat 
of Charity. 

"And^lready, I thought: How little will the world 
believe of the sincerity of such an effort which utterly 



The First Vow. 41 

overthrows the equilibrium of human nature ! Noth- 
ing for nothing ; such is the law of the world ! 

" And I heard beforehand the mighty clamor which 
would be raised against me, crying, ' Hypocrite ! 
hypocrite ! hypocrite ! ' 

" It is the hardest insult to submit to. 

IC I yet retain within a corner of my heart the pride 
of a soldier. ' Hypocrite ! hypocrite ! ' May I live 
loaded with this insult ; may I die absorbed in this 
cry, my Saviour and my God, and my shame be your 
glory ! " 

" In order to preach, however, as well as to teach, 
it is necessary to have knowledge. I studied ; and 
while studying, the mysterious voice which I had 
heard at Manresa still sounded in my ears, murmuring 
ever the selfsame words : ' This is not enough/ 

" Oh, Blessed Virgin ! I implored ; Mother Im- 
maculate ! what is still needed ? Will I not obtain a 
knowledge of what God wills me to do ? .... I 
pause at this point, overwhelmed with veneration, 
happiness, and sorrow. I experience the same emo- 
tions each time that the revelation of the mysterio.us 
and miraculous facts that have marked my time of 

trial arises to my lips Was I worthy of seeing 

and hearing what I have seen and heard ? Oh, Jesus ! 
full of tenderness and pity ! Treasure of the poor, 
Glory of the humble ! the day even upon which I first 



42 The Jesuits. 

clasped the hands of Peter Lef evre, who was to be the 
first consecrated among us, my strength augmented, 
my hope redoubled, and the idea of this association 
being inspired within my soul, never again did the 
voice repeat, i That is not enough.' 

" It was not enough ; with the idea of the associa- 
tion, its plan was clearly outlined in my mind. 

" I am a soldier ; I can dream only of an army. 
Moreover, do I not continually remember having seen 
in my first ecstacies the prodigious multitude who 
march in darkness against the standard of the Cross, 
and the mystical conflict beneath the two standards 
on the boundless plain ? 

" My army existed, although I was yet alone with 
Lefevre, to whom I had revealed nothing. 

"You came, one after the other, my friends and 
children, and without your knowledge I enrolled you. 
Others presented themselves, but I paused at seven. 

" For the present, there will be no more. What the 
future demands, God will supply. 

"We are seven, against millions of men unfaithful to 
God. Even the millions of mankind who remain faith- 
ful to God are not always with us. 

" We do not know our friends who are ignorant of 
our existence ; but we know our enemies, and we will 
make ourselves known to them. 

" We have neither authority nor mission ; we pos- 



The First Vow. 43 

sess only right, the right of bestowing ourselves, with- 
out exacting anything in return. Our force lies in the 
absence of all force. We desire neither arras, nor 
subsidies, nor ramparts, nor anything perishable. 

" We shall possess all in Jesus Christ. 

" We will walk among men as the Divine Master 
traversed Judea, with extended hands and undisguised 
heart. We are to-day what yesterday I alone con- 
stituted — the Society founded to carry the Cross of 
Jesus. 

" Each of us will fall along the road under the 
weight of this sweet and awful burden. But what 
matters it ? The work will live and increase. I know it. 

" The Society of Jesus will conquer in Jesus and 
through Jesus. 

"It will arrest the progress of the desertion which 
desolates the temple ; it will fill up the great voids 
which have been made in the ranks of the faithful. 

" Do not doubt ; this will be accomplished. 

" Antiquity possesses a sublime fable : Orpheus, in 
search of his love, penetrated even into the regions of 
death. We will do as Orpheus ; the Society of Jesus 
will seek the victims of apostasy even in the hell of 
apostasy; it will rescue these precious souls from 
death, and plunging into the most profound abyss, 
will endeavor to snatch from supreme misfortune the 
soul of the apostate himself. .... 

"Already some misled souls hesitate, and question 



44 The Jesuits. 

■ 
which is the right road ; it will take but little to direct 

these aright. 

" But there are also multitudes of new-born souls, 
those of the children, the beloved children, of whom 
Jesus said: * Let them come unto me ;' we will take 
these children by the hand, and we will lead them to 
Jesus ; this will not greatly affect the present, although 
it may do much for the future. 

"Again, there are multitudes of souls, as impossible 
to number as the grains of sand upon the sea-shore, 

who dwell in spiritual darkness beyond the Ocean 

Xavier, thine eye sparkles ; I know how your great 
heart has bled at this recital of the travelers, showing 
how the yoke of the demon weighs upon the Indies, 
Japan, China, the countries of Africa and America — 
in a word, upon the vaster portion of the earth 

" You shall go, Xavier ; we will go ; the Society of 
Jesus will go ; it will pay, at the price of the blood of 
its martyrs, for as many souls as have been lost by the 
Church in the shipwreck of the Reformation, and 
double, and treble the number, insomuch that the fold 
of the Good Shepherd shall be filled again to over- 
flowing." 

" Let us praise God. We are the army of God 

I say, ' We are/ .... for the work is founded ; it 
exists, since my thought is no longer known to myself 
alone ; since it has passed from my soul into yours. 



The First Vow. 45 

We are born. Here is the cradle of a force. In esti- 
mating the age of this force, men will reckon from the 
act of its sanction ; for us, it will date from the day 
consecrated to the Immaculate Queen of Angels. We 
know that from the present hour we are the soldiers 
of prayer, of sacrifice, and of charity. 

" Every army must have a General, and we shall have 
a General who will be our earthly chief. Nothing in 
the world shall be more vast, nor more complete than 
his authority, if it be not our liberty. 

"And. this liberty, united to this authority, will form 
a whole, which shall be perfect obedience, the only 
remedy applicable to the fever of the times. 

"The obedience of which I speak can be defined 
only by naming Him to whom it will be due, in the 
same measure, and by the same right, as well by our 
Superior-General as by the last among us. This Su- 
preme Chief we do not look for here below, but in 
heaven ; it shall be Thou, oh, Jesus Christ, our 
Saviour ! 

" To obey you, O God ! is to be free, and to com- 
mand in your Holy Name is to obey. 

" The tree of Faith, which is the tree of the Cross, 
puts forth its symmetrical branches of authority and 
obedience ; both bear the same fruit, which is liberty. 

" To command, to obey ; two phases of the same 
sacrifice ; two meanings of the same word ; love ! 
Jesus, Lord, on your level, he who commands is the 



46 • The Jesuits. 

most humble. He is the servant among servants ■ he 
appertains to those who belong to you ; and thus 
only, O God, our Saviour ! in you, and by you, can 
the abnegation of power and the devotion of obedience 
be joined in a union which brings forth liberty " 

" We are seven to-day ; to-morrow we can number a 
thousand. It is necessary that an earthly chief be a 
powerful instrument in the hands of our Divine Master, 
under the jurisdiction of the Common Father of the 
faithful. 

" Our house shall not be built in view of human in- 
terest ; nevertheless, our house will flourish, even after 
a method which shall not enter into the vocation of 
the Order, nor into its efforts, but which may be nec- 
essary, according to the times, to the accomplishment 
of its providential work. 

" I know it ; I see it ; I affirm it. 

" I know, I see, and I affirm, that the earthly Chief 
of our Order, the General of our pacific army, shall be 
powerful among the great ones of the earth, even in 
the depth of his humility. It is necessary ; it will be. 
Thus you will choose him * intimately united to God,' 
as much in prayer as in all his other actions, in order 
that he may himself possess, by reason of going to the 
fountain-head, the abundance of grace which should be 
diffused by him throughout our body.* 



* St. Ignatius," Constitutions," Part IX. 



The First Vow. 47 

" He is bound to recommend, by his example, the 
practice of all virtues, ' especially the splendor of 
charity;' there should be seen in him, humility of 
soul, exterior modesty, circumspection in speech, 
a severity tempered with sweetness ; and an invincible 
courage inspired by the words of the apostle St. Paul, 
* For when I am weak then am I powerful.'* 

"As for what is known as force in human language — 
science, intelligence, discernment, prudence in direct- 
ing affairs — God will supply them ; because our chief 
will be the servant whom the Lord has named ' quern 
constituit Dominus ' to command the family. ' He 
will appear to be above, but he will be really beneath.' 
The family weighs heavily upon him, and he can say, 
i Lord, you have placed men over our heads ; impos- 
uisti homines super capita nostra.'t 

" This authority, which shall be confided by us in 
Jesus Christ to the chosen father of the family, will 
seem so complete, that it shall be said, ' Nothing of 
the kind has ever existed ; it is a troop of slaves led 
by a tyrant,' and others will go further, saying, ' He 
is a despot, seated upon corpses ! ' 

" Singular slaves, these, who recognize above them 



* Quum enim infirmor tunc potens sum. II. ad Cor. 
xii. 10. 

f Words of Father de Ponlevoy, cited in the admirable 
work of Father de Galriac, p. 357 of the "Life of Father de 
Ponlevoy." 



48 The Jesuits. 

but God alone. And whoever attacks the religion of 
Christ, will see these corpses arise, 

" No, those who will speak thus shall be either mis- 
taken or calumniators; there will be in our house 
neither tyrants, slaves, nor corpses. There will be 
only living and free Christians. 

"An election will be the guarantee of this power. 
really magnificent in strength and extent, and during 
its entire duration it will be sustained, balanced, and 
controlled by the judgment of the assembled family. 
Never, as courtiers, shall they gather about their head, 
but as counselors, aids, and judges. His work shall 
be the application of certain and permanent laws, 
which he will not have made, and which he shall 
neither elude nor abolish. He will do all, it is certain, 
for good, but he will do nothing for evil. He will do 
all— 

" For the greater glory of God. 
For the best service to souls. 
For the sanctification of his brethren. 
For the sacrifice of himself. 
He will do nothing prejudicial to truth. 
Nothing against justice. 
Nothing against charity.* 

" There will be above him, above the power that will 
be represented as absolute by its enemies, God, the 



* St. Ignatius, " Constitutions," Part VI. 



The First Vow. 49 

Vicar of God, the interior law, that is to say, the law 
of the State ; the exterior law, which is the Rule, and 
the society itself, obedient, but sovereign. 

" We are the army of Authority, we shall bear author- 
ity. We desire it as great, and greater than ever was 
borne by any union of men here below, but we wish free- 
dom too ; and we shall enjoy truer and wider freedom 
than any human society heretofore, because we shall 
be nothing in our house, where God shall be all. 

" Jesus Christ is our beginning and our end. 

"We see Jesus Christ in our General ; our General 
sees Jesus Christ in us ; Christus omnia in omnibus. 

" It is thus that our celestial mother has given me 
a heritage for you, which is the Rule of Jesus, so vast 
as to contain at once perfect authority and perfect 
liberty in such measure as comports with the sorrowful 
passage of man here below. 

" I see it ; I know it ; I affirm it 

" We are seven, we can be one hundred thousand. 
Throughout our ranks, composed of the dull and the 
talented, as they will be, the Rule, allowing authority 
to be exercised to its utmost limits, guarded as it will 
be against all excess by the counterpoise of liberty, 
will penetrate our entire body with the life and force 
which is known in war as discipline, and which is a 
lesser and an expedient form of the absolute, which is 
perfect obedience. 
4 



50 The Jesuits. 

" Our army of peace shall substitute for discipline 
self-abandonment, such as is owed by man only to 
God, and which we will voluntarily render to one 
who will be for us the representative of the Son of 
God. 

" Now, or never, is the hour to oppose, to the awful 
flood, a barrier of devoted hearts. Prayer will no 
longer suffice ; it is necessary to work. Others have 
hitherto assembled to imitate Mary of Bethany in her 
pious contemplation at the feet of Jesus. Happy were 
they ; let us praise them ; we may not imitate them. 

"As for us, we are the children of Martha, who serves. 
We will be priests at the same time that we are re- 
ligious, and we shall accomplish the work of priests. 
Study the confessional, the pulpit, the school, alms of 
spiritual and temporal bread ; behold your task. 

" Combating the present evil, preparing future good, 
preaching the Word in the thickest of the schism, and 
especially where the Truth is attacked ; going in search 
of ignorance and error even to the confines of the 
earth ; teaching the little ones to spell, youth to 
believe, manhood to think ; men, women, and all, to 
love God, the country, and the family ; teaching the 
powerful, clemency; the feeble, resignation — com- 
panion of hope ; the rich, generosity ; the unfortunate, 
pardon ; all, the holy law of charity ; behold your life ! 

" To revolt we will oppose our vow of obedience ; to 



The First Vow. 51 

avaricious egotism our vow of poverty ; to pride and 
ambition our vow of humility. 

" Neither for praying, nor for celebrating mass, nor 
for preaching, nor teaching, shall we receive offerings 
of money from any person, and yet they will reproach 
us ; for we shall have other enemies than the enemies 
of the Church. 

" Notwithstanding the absence of all remuneration, 
our poverty will build immense dwellings and dis- 
tribute large alms. 

" Our foes will be astonished at that, and we will be 
accused. We will pursue our way, undaunted, as if 
the insult were not offered, loving those who have out- 
raged us as ourselves, for the love of God. 

a It is here, my children, where arises the difficulty to 
do, and the impossibility to believe. 

"The law which ordains to turn the other cheek, is 
inhuman, and so utterly repugnant to the heart of 
man that he, in view of the* accomplished law, sees, 
.and always will see, hypocrisy in the impossible sacri- 
fice, or baseness in the heroism, that he can not com- 
prehend. 

" Never will a man be found, detached from God, to 
admit that it needs one thousand times more courage 
to swallow the bitterness of outrage than to spit it into 
the face of the in suiter. 

" To men, on account of the miracle of our poverty 



52 The Jesuits. 

we shall appear to be thieves ; on account of the mir- 
acle of our charity, we will seem to be hypocrites ; on 
account of the miracle of our humility, we shall be 
accounted base men. 

" Glory be to God ! . 

" Our death even will disarm neither mockery nor in- 
sult ; it will be said of us, as it was said of our divine 
Master, ' that we have sustained our role unto the 
end,' that our last sigh is our last falsehood. 

" Glory, glory to God alone ! 

" We are the companions of Him whom opprobrium 
glorified. 

" Praise be to the Lord ! Even as our destitution 
shall be a store of wealth, our baseness a supernatural 
courage, so shall our overthrow confer on us an un- 
rivaled power, 

" Under the feet of our enemies, kings and people 
will seek us. Lord, keep from us pride on the steps of 
the throne, as well as in the depths of misery. 

" Glory to God ! All glory to God ! All for the 
greater glory of God." 

Ignatius fell on his knees, and the six imitated his 
example. None of them had yet spoken. 

Ignatius raised his clasped hands, and said in Latin : 
" Jesus most patient. ,; 



The First Vow. 53 

The others responded in the same tongue : 
" Have mercy upon us. 
Jesus most obedient, 
Have mercy upon us. 
Jesus, sweet and humble of heart, 
Have mercy upon us. 

11 Let us pray. — O God, who by the intercession of 
the Immaculate Virgin, hath kindled the light of the 
Holy Spirit in the soul of your servants, grant, if it be 
Thy holy will, that their dwelling here below be built 
for all, and not for themselves, in order that having 
given their lives for the salvation of men in Jesus Christ, 
they may never cease to be persecuted for your greater 
glory, Thou who livest and reignest forever and ever. — 
Amen." 

And having made the sign of the cross, they arose. 

It was now broad day. The people of the neigh- 
borhood were hastening along the various roads to at- 
tend mass at the parish abbey. Ignatius and, his sons 
took a path to the left of the church, through the field 
which made a descent from the cemetery to the chapel 
of the martyr, situate as we have described, and whose 
vicinity was then deserted. They entered alone into 
the crypt, which was prepared for the Holy Sacrifice. 
Tradition fixes nine o'clock as the hour at which Peter 
Lefevre celebrated mass. 



54 The Jesuits. 

" After having fasted and prayed in common," says 
Cretineau-Joly, " they assembled on the fifteenth of 
August, 1534, in a subterranean chapel of the Church 
of Montmatre,* which pious belief t assigns as the spot 
where St. Denis was decapitated. It was the feast of the 
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Ignatius had chosen 
this day in order that the Society should be born in the 
heart of Mary triumphant. 

There these seven Christians, to whom Peter Lef evre 
had administered communion with his own hands, 
made a vow to live in chastity. They pledged them- 
selves to observe perpetual poverty ; they promised 
God, that after having finished their theological course, 
they would undertake a voyage to Jerusalem ; but if, at 
the end of a year, they found it impossible to gain the 
Holy City (on account of the war), they would go to 
throw themselves at the feet of the Sovereign Pontiff. J 
to beg of him existence as an Order, and receive his 
p'ommand. 

And this was all ; the Society of Jesus was founded. 



* Which is a slight error. 

\ And impious belief also ; witness Dulaure, for example. 

I " History of the Society of Jesus,'* Vol. L, p. 26. 



II. 

THE FIRST FATHERS. 

In the will of God all is marked out ; but as there 
is in eternity nothing of haste, so the designs of God 
are accomplished with immutable regularity. 

Between the first thought conceived, or rather re- 
ceived, by inspiration in the Grotto of Manresa, and 
the first word uttered on the summits of Montmatre, 
which command the city of Paris, and on which, to- 
morrow, a marvelous temple vowed to the Sacred 
Heart was to arise to admonish the world, there was 
an interval of fourteen years. 

It was only five years after the vow of Montmatre, 
in the year 1539, that Pope Paul III., taking cogni- 
zance of the abridged formula of the "Constitutions" 
of the new Order, presented by Ignatius Loyola, and 
comparing, with his gift of infallibility, the menace to 
the world, the promise of heaven, the danger to be 
averted, and this dawning light with the victory of 
darkness, cried, u Hie est Dei digitus."* 

Still it was not until the end of another year that the 
promulgation of the Bull, Regemini melitantis Eeelesice, 



* Here is the finger of God. 

(55) 



56 The Jesuits. 

took place, which canonically instituted the Society 
of Jesus. 

To those who are astonished at this delay, we an- 
swer by the very text of the " Constitutions," where 
St. Ignatius takes as much time and as many precau- 
tions to make a single Jesuit, as to create the entire 
Order. 

In fact, a remarkable thing, and one which can not 
be too much dwelt upon, is the respect of Saint Ig- 
natius for his work as being an instrument destined by 
him to the special and immediate service of the Al- 
mighty. Never has an Order exacted, to test the vo- 
cation and capacity of its members, such a series of 
long and difficult proofs. 

Here, truly perpetual effort and abundant patience 
are the aids and the testimony of grace. All is won 
from God, but by the severe labor of man. 

Let us count. There are two years spent in the 
Novitiate without study (which, however, supposes 
some necessary preliminary study) in order to arrive 
at the grade of scholastic, or scholar, which comprises 
two years of Rhetoric, three years of Philosophy (and 
Science), and at least one year of Regency;* then 
come four, and sometimes six years of Theology; 
after, the year of final probation, undergone in Re- 



* They thus term the professorship exercised by the young 
Religious. 



The First Fathers. 57 

treat, after which one is admitted " professed," or be- 
comes a member of the Society of Jesus, which gives, 
according to Father de Ravignan, cited in the excellent 
work of M. Ad. Archier, a " minimum " of fourteen 
years for an effective novitiate — in memory, perhaps, 
of the equal lapse of time which in the life of Saint 
Ignatius separated Manresa from Montmatre. 

Another proof of the deliberation which attended 
the first operations of Ignatius and his sons, is that 
between the vow of Montmatre and the visit to the 
Chief of the Church, but three recruits were admitted 
into the Company, which carried the total number of 
the affiliated up to ten. These three recruits, who 
were to be no less celebrated than their older spiritual 
brethren, were named Claudius Le Jay, d'Annecy, 
John Codure of Dauphiny, and Pasquier Brouet of 
Picardy. 

Accompanied on foot, the rosary about their neck 
and a canticle on their lips, by Lef evre, Xavier, Laynez, 
Bobadilla, Salmeron, and Rodriquez, they accomplish- 
ed the long and difficult pilgrimage through Protestant 
Germany, which brought them to Venice, where Igna- 
tius awaited them, and where, having recognized the 
impossibility of gaining Jerusalem, they separated, to 
meet again at Rome, at the feet of His Holiness the 
Pope. 

There, notwithstanding the good-will of the Holy 
Father, they were met by grave obstacles, and it 



58 The Jesuits. 

would seem as if the strange and obstinate repugnance 
which should in the future ever, and in a special man- 
ner, attempt to check the effort of the company of 
Jesus, came into existence with it, or even before it. 

Rome was at that time in an attitude of legitimate 
hostility toward certain Religious Orders, of which the 
decadence had done so much to furnish a pretext for 
rebellion, and which had furnished so many apostates 
from the Faith to swell the ranks of the battalions of 
heresy. 

Evil had obtained such headway in the cloisters, and 
the falling off in virtue had become so great, that 
Cardinal Guiddiccioni, he of whom Paul III. said, in 
learning of his decease, " My successor has just died," 
had proposed the plan of suppressing all the Orders, 
with the exception of four. 

It was to this prelate, first among his counselors, 
that the Pope confided the examination of the " Con- 
stitutions " of Ignatius, joining with him in the work 
two other commissioners. 

Guiddiccioni, whose opinion had its foundation in 
the misfortunes of the time, and not in the examination 
of the new work, reported " that there was no reason 
for authorizing it," and his sentiments ruled those of 
his assistants. 

But these ten men had in them something which 
was not human. In place of protesting, they praised 
God, and offered themselves to whomever would take 



The First Fathers. 59 

them, for the service of the Almighty, asking nothing 
in return, and all advancing with equal pace in the 
pathway of their steadfast faith. 

They quietly separated, each to combat heresy at 
the divers points where it gained the firmest footing ; 
Lef evre and Laynez at Parma ; Bobadilla in the Isle 
of Ischia ; Le Jay at Brescia, infected by the plague ; 
Pasquier Brouet, at Sienna, where revolt had invaded 
the convents of the Religious ; Codure at Padua, 
Francis Xavier and Rodriquez at Lisbon, where they 
pressed already the preparations of the expedition 
which should enwreathe with such glorious immortality 
the name of the " Apostle of the Indies." 

In the meantime, Cardinal Guiddiccioni was con- 
stantly importuned and besieged by the voices of those 
who fostered the humble reputation of these indefat- 
igable laborers, working everywhere in unison. 

The Society of Jesus leaped into life, and electrified 
the world by its sudden growth and marvelous achieve- 
ments. 

And the learned Cardinal, who had shared the in- 
credulity of Zachary, at length opened his eyes. He 
studied the work of Ignatius, which he had condemned 
without reading, and as soon as he had done so, in- 
toned a canticle. 

The man who had been the first to proclaim the 
necessity of suppressing the greater part of the Re- 
ligious Orders, and cutting down those which should 



60 The Jesuits. 

be allowed to survive, loudly declared that it was 
" good, opportune, and indispensable to authorize the 
Society of Jesus," in order to oppose it, on one side, 
to the flood of interior corruption, and to meet on the 
other the invasions from abroad. 

The Bull, containing a clear and exact synopsis of 
the Constitutions, devoted a considerable margin to 
the approbation of the Holy See, as expressed therein. 
The work of Ignatius was sanctioned, not only as a 
whole, but even in its details, and the Institution be- 
came an instrument of the Church. 

Immediately following the promulgation of the Bull, 
came the election of a General. 

The service of religion detained the greater part of 
the members at a distance from Rome. These voted 
by writing. 

The others, Le Jay, Salmeron, Laynez, Codure, and 
Brouet, were collected about Ignatius. Three days 
were consecrated to fasting and prayer, to implore the 
light of the Holy Spirit, and on the fourth, by an 
unanimous vote, Ignatius Loyola was elected General, 
or 6i proposed," to employ the terms of the Bull. 

Ignatius might have expected this result, neverthe- 
less it terrified him. 

Disobedient for the first and last time, without 
utterly refusing the charge imposed — a proceeding 
which would have been in direct contravention of 
the rule established by himself — he disputed, to the ut- 



The First Fathers. 61 

most of his power, the unanimous will of his brethren, 
and insisted upon a new election, which terminated as 
the first 

At this he shed tears, comprehending fully as he did 
the extent of his responsibility, but yielded. He had 
at that time attained his fiftieth year, and had been 
four years a priest. 

" On Easter Day, the seventeenth of April, 1540, he 
accepted the government of the Society of Jesus. 
On the twenty-second of the same month, after having 
visited the Basilicas of Rome, Ignatius and his com- 
panions arrived at that of Saint Paul, outside the 
walls. The General celebrated mass at the altar of 
the Blessed Virgin, then before communicating, turned 
toward the people. In one hand he held the Sacred 
Host, in the other the formula of the Vows. 

" He pronounced this formula in a loud voice, pledg- 
ing himself to obedience, in regard to the Missions, to 
what is specified in the Bull of the twenty-seventh of 
September. Then he placed five Hosts upon the 
Paten, and approaching Laynez, Le Jay, Brouet, Co- 
dure, and Salmeron, who were kneeling at the foot of 
the altar, he received their profession, and adminis- 
tered to them the Holy Communion."* 

" During the seven years that I have lived in the 
house of the Jesuits, what have I seen among them ? 



* Cretineau-Joly. 



62 The Jesuits. 

A most laborious and frugal life, all the hours of which 
were shared between the care they bestowed upon us 
and the exercises of their austere profession. This can 
be attested by thousands of men who have been their 
pupils besides me ; this is why I can not help being 
astonished at seeing them accused of teaching ' moral 
corruption.' " These words being written long after the 
foundation of the Order, I cite them here, in refutation 
of the assertion which has been so often made, that, 
though the Order was glonous in its beginning, it 
speedily became demoralized. 

Just two hundred years had elapsed since the Jesuits 
had taken the first place in the ranks of the champions 
of the Church, when Voltaire traced thes^ lines*, in the 
month of February. They do honor to Voltaire, and 
only render justice to the Jesuits, whom calumny then 
assailed at every point. 

Voltaire " can not help being astonished" that they 
should calumniate them. He is easily astonished. 

Those who are accustomed to follow the current 
and control the ardor of the philosophical or political 
passion, in a slight degree, everywhere, but especially 
amongst us, should rather be astonished that such men 
could be for one instant free from calumny. 

It is the custom among their accusers to place the 
infancy of the Institution above reproach, and to salute 
its founders with an appearance of courteous imparti- 
ality. That the first hours of its existence were beau- 



The First Fathers. 63 

tiful and pure and grand, they admit ; only the sequel 
did not fulfill the promise of the beginning, they affirm, 
and they lament that this should be the case. 

We will briefly relate the history of these latter days, 
as in a few words we have shown the simplicity of the 
facts which prepared the way for the birth of the Order 
and accompanied its first existence. But before 
pursuing this recital, destined to take, so frequently, 
the form of an historical discussion, I beg permission 
to remark here a fact which may be viewed from an 
original stand-point. 

Each epoch of the social life of the Jesuits possesses, 
sometimes for one, sometimes for another of its sworn 
detractors, a little of the satisfecit accorded to the in- 
nocence of the infancy of the Society ; each episode of 
the great drama, which they have acted in as an Order, 
has its apologists in the ranks of their most bitter ad- 
versaries, and one is perpetually astonished at hearing 
such a Protestant, such a Philosopher, such an Atheist, 
even, defend the Society of Jesus, apropos of some 
particular accusation, of which they have been the 
victims, so much so that by only gathering together 
these pleadings, these amends for former partiality, 
these refutations of falsehoods imposed upon the cre- 
dulity of prejudice, which are brought about by the re- 
awakening of the old Gallic spirit, a panegyric may be 
woven, of a most fantastic pattern, it is true, but singu- 
larly curious and complete, of the posterity of Loyola. 



66 The Jesuits. 

Rank, for example ! Ah ! that is serious ! It is 
time to defend one's self. 

Men defend their rank if they can ! 

And they will die sooner than abandon fortune ! 

And as it will happen, they will die ! 

They will die because of the first concession made, 
which has encouraged the wolves. 

For the sake of the indifferent, however, as well as 
for the believers, and even the Atheists, let us see 
what a Jesuit really is. 

He is a Religious. 

And what is a Religious ? 

He is a man, who, to unite himself more closely 
to God, accomplishes of his own free will certain 
sacrifices, accepts voluntarily certain duties deter- 
mined by a rule, and assured by vows which bestow 
the solemn approbation of an authority, admitted by 
the law of Catholic countries, and which is known as 
the Church. 

From a purely human point of view, what is more 
legitimate ? What use, more manifestly lawful, can a 
citizen make of his liberty ? Under what pretext, by 
what right, shall the exercise of this liberty be hin- 
dered or restrained ? 

If it appear to you useful and proper to seek to ac- 
cumulate the goods of the earth, it is your right to do 
so ; if it please me to abandon them, it is equally my 
right to do so. 



The First Fathers. 67 

It is your right, if it seem to you useful and proper, 
to found a family ;. but if I determine to abandon these 
joys of the hearth, to devote myself to God and to 
mankind, my right is equal to yours. 

If it seem useful and proper to you to retain your 
entire independence, it is permitted ; but if I fear so 
much liberty, and wish to limit it, is it prohibited ? 

No, unquestionably not, except by the exercise of a 
tyranny at once so imbecile and so odious, that in order 
to gather any examples of it, one is obliged to peruse the 
worst soiled pages of the foulest volume in our annals. 

Thus speaks good common sense, thus reason 
teaches, faith indorses, and the Church approves. 

And what says history ? 

Does she deny that modern life has sprung from 
Christ ? 

No. History shows us the first Christians of Jeru- 
salem laying down their worldly goods at the feet of 
the Apostles, to live in common, in poverty ; the des- 
erts of Egypt peopled by solitaries ; the East sancti- 
fied by the holy men of the desert ; the West, by the 
sons of Augustine, Bruno, Benedict, and Dominic, fa- 
thers of those great families of laborers whose work 
enlightened Europe ; who civilized barbarism ; taught 
agriculture; guarded the treasure of literature, and 
revived the arts ; heaping all these benefits upon a 
world which, in return, has shown them the scorn of 
its ignorance, and the hatred of its ingratitude. 



68 The Jesuits. 

In point of being a Religious, the Jesuit is neither a 
novelty nor a monstrosity. There have been Religious 
before him. 

But it is urged " He is a Religious, sui generis, hav- 
ing but one special end, a manner of living that is 
peculiarly his own ; tendencies, obligations, and cus- 
toms which distinguish him from all other Religious." 

To be sure, and why not ! He is a Jesuit, and not 
a Carthusian, a Benedictine, nor a Franciscan. Just 
as an artilleryman is a soldier, a cuirassier also, and 
a hussar the same, although the cuirassier is not a 
hussar, nor the hussar an artilleryman, nor the artil- 
leryman a cuirassier. 

The Carthusian prays in his solitude for the world 
he has quitted ; the Trappist sanctifies by his pen- 
ance the noble and severe labor of the field ; the 
Benedictine consumes his life in the arid researches 6f 
science ; the Jesuits go beyond the seas, converting 
to civilization the barbarous tribes of Asia and Africa, 
the savages of America and Oceanica ; or again, with 
no less bravery, struggle in Europe for truth against 
error, for the freedom of conscience against the des- 
potism of men and the tyranny of passion. And is this 
evil? 

The Society of Jesus has never denied that it has one 
sole end in view. 

Its glory is to have been instituted for a special and 



The First Fathers. 69 

well-defined end ; it is a sacred battalion, or it is 
nothing. This is its boast. 

We have seen, beginning from the sixteenth century, 
a terrible subversion of ideas ; the spirit of revolt 
sweeping over the world like a violent wind, and hav- 
ing assailed the Church, presently overthrows the 
political institutions, and even the foundations of 
society. 

These awful storms, whose consequences we still feel, 
have celebrated names in history — Protestantism, Jan- 
senism, Philosophy, and the Revolution. 

Luther, armed with the mutilated Bible, arises 
against the Church, and presents to the astonished 
world the spectacle of a triumph as rapid as it is un- 
fortunate, improbable as an ugly dream. But Luther 
finds the Jesuits opposed to him, and he fails of 
victory. 

Jansenius disguises, but poorly, in the pages of a 
spurious Saint Augustine, the first workings of his 
false and illegitimate Protestantism. The Jesuits close 
that route against him ; he can not pass. 

The philosophers of the eighteenth century tear up 
the Bible, deny tradition, and pretend to " crush the 
Church." The Jesuits come forward to the com- 
bat They fall, betrayed by the royal authority 

which they defended, but the earth trembles beneath 
their fall ; royal authority has worked its own ruin, and 
the God whose existence was denied, seems to turn 



?o The Jesuits. 

away from the sight of the queen of nations wallowing 
in the bloody mire of a Saturnalia that dishonors 
history. 

Is God vanquished, however ? No. Is the Church 
crushed ? No. One is as impossible as the other. 

But the Jesuits ? Ah ! unquestionably the Jesuits 
can die ; they possess neither the eternity of God nor 
the immortality of the Church in time. • 

But they live ! Would you have a proof? Count 
their enemies. 

Would" so much hate be roused by anything which 
exists only in the tomb ? 

Now, I understand this hate, and the men it 
animates. It is natural, it is almost just that the 
Protestants should hate the Jesuits ; that this aversion 
should be shared by the obscure remnant of Jansen- 
ism flung disabled into a corner, and by the worthy 
prosperity of the philosophers of the eighteenth century, 
and above all, by the unhappy throng of perpetually 
deceived sufferers for whom the rack is always kept in 
readiness by the industry of the tribunes ; but the 
others ? 

What of the immense majority of those who, among 
us, are neither Protestants, nor Jansenists, nor Philoso- 
phers, nor tribunes, nor the prey of tribunes ? 

Will these never be brought to comprehend that we 
live in a time when truth, carried along in its sled, can 



The First Fathers. 71 

afford to throw nothing to the wolf, neither God, nor 
the Church, nor even the Jesuits, because the wolf 
who has devoured, will devour ! 

The Jesuits, however, ask favor from none. Intrepid 
in the consciousness of their duty, they render reso- 
lutely to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that 
which is God's. 

What think you could terrify them, born to encounter 
danger — the sons of promised persecution ? 

They but. live to combat, and death dissolves all 
vows, even that of heroism. 

And it is because they do not fear to die, that they 
will live. 

If a proof were needed of the necessity of the work 
of Ignatius, it would be superabundantly found in the 
rapidity of its first development. The Company of 
Jesus numbered ten at the time of the Bull of their 
institution, which limited their number to sixty, and 
hardly had a few months flown by, when the Sovereign 
Pontiff was obliged to remove this restriction — last ves- 
tige of the "prejudicial" repugnances of Cardinal 
Guiddiccioni. 

The limited plan of this book will not permit us to 
render sufficient homage to the sainted career of these 
first Jesuits — all singularly eloquent orators, excep- 
tional professors, accomplished theologians, remark- 
able writers, ardent apostles of charity, and powerful 



72 The Jesuits. 

defenders of truth ; hardly can we follow each of them, 
with a glance along his route, before entering with the 
Society upon the general current of events. Loyola, 
center and soul of the Society, is almost entirely lost 
sight of, as far as personal works are concerned, shortly 
after his exaltation. His action is immense, but lost 
in the common movement which it directs. He 
had said in his " Constitutions," the General shall 
be chosen neither " to preach" nor "gain recruits," 
but "to govern." 

James Laynez, whose admirable mind seems to have 
shared most intimately, with Lefevre and Xavier, the 
confidence of Loyola, of whom he was, it is said, the 
coadjutor at the time of the definite compiling of the 
Rule, was first sent to Venice, where the struggle begun 
by him against heresy was attended with such success, 
that the throngs slept at the doors of the churches in 
order not to miss his preaching. When he had van- 
quished error at Venice, he achieved the same ora- 
torical triumphs at Padua and Brisera. 

I was once obliged to seek, for some time, the name 
of Laynez, badly spelt, in a historical " Dictionnaire," 
considered everywhere most respectable, and recom- 
mended to the use of youth, and at length found it 
beneath the name of the singer Lais, to whom a very 
fine article was devoted. Two lines only were given 
to Laynez. He had been, however, one of the 
lights of the Council of Trent, before distinguishing 



The First Fathers. 73 

himself at the Colloquy of Poissy, and the noble hu- 
mility which had prompted him to refuse a cardinal's 
hat, the object of so much passionate ambition, should, 
perhaps, have merited mention. 

Peter Lef evre followed Ortoz, the Ambassador of 
Charles V., who was returning to his master, and the 
disputants of Germany constantly evaded all encounter 
with him, so great was the reputation for eloquence and 
science which had preceded him. He accomplished, 
nevertheless, great work, crowned by a considerable 
result, since it sufficed to strengthen in the faith the 
Catholics, startled and tormented by the contagion 
which surrounded them on all sides. He was the 
preacher of the court of Ratisbon, where numerous 
conversions attended his words ; he continued his 
apostolate in Spain, and returning to the borders of the 
Rhine, there professed Holy Scriptures at Mavence, 
with a brilliancy and an authority which gained over 
Herman de Wiede, the Archbishop Elector of Cologne, 
whose imminent desertion brought about that of his 
flock. Marvelous effect of eloquent charity !. With the 
flock Lefevre saved the pastor. 

But hardly has he gained this double victory, than 
he sets sail for Portugal ; traverses anew the entire 
Peninsula, and founds the College of Valladolid. The 
letter which summoned him to the Council of Trent 
found him stricken with a fever in the midst of his 
work. " It is not necessary to live," he exclaims, full 



74 The Jesuits. 

of the mother-thought of his Order, " but it is necessary 
to obey." And he sets out, notwithstanding the sup- 
plications of his pupils, never pausing until he reaches 
the arms of Ignatius at Rome, where he arrives, joy- 
fully, but to die. 

Le Jay and Bobadilla had replaced him in Germany, 
where both, imitating the humility of Laynez, should 
refuse the honor of an episcopate. It was Le Jay who 
responded to the Lutherans when they threatened to 
drown him in the Danube, " What matters it whether 
one get to heaven by earth or water ? " 

Salmeron, the Benjamin of the affiliated of Mont- 
matre, made equal headway against the invasions of 
Protestantism. After the death of Lefevre, he was 
chosen, with Laynez, in the quality of theologian of the 
Pope, to assist at the discussions of that Council, where 
the Roman Church was to prove herself stronger and 
as full of vitality as ever.* 

Le Jay occupied therein an equal place as the theo- 
logian of the Archbishop of Augsbourg. Hardly in 
existence, the Society already placed her humble sons 
among the Princes of the Church, and they proved 
themselves worthy of this distinction, for the Arch- 
bishop of Modena writes : " The Fathers Salmeron 
and Laynez have spoken on the Eucharist with such 



* " History of the Society," Ad. Archier, p. 93. 



The First Fathers. 75 

eloquence that I have esteemed myself happy to be 
near such learned and holy fathers." 

The book which should contain only the history of 
the first ten Jesuits would be most beautiful, and touch 
upon all the great ecclesiastical events of that portion 
of the sixteenth century, even though Francis Xavier 
should not be spoken of therein. 

On Francis Xavier alone might be written a poem 
which would be a glowing Epic of Charity ; but our 
space will not allow us to do more than briefly sketch 
this marvelous life. 

From the beginning, or rather before even the 
Order was founded, Xavier and Rodriquez had been 
appealed to by John III., of Braganca, to carry the 
knowledge of the Gospel beyond the ocean. 

We remember the words addressed to Xavier by 
Ignatius, speaking of the perils and the joys of mis- 
sionaries : " Xavier, thine eye sparkles." 

The apostolic vocation of the young student of the 
University of Paris had only increased since that time. 
He received with enthusiasm the order of his, depart- 
ure, and would have set out on his route without even 
the necessary garments if Loyola had not placed his 
own mantle on his shoulders. 

Although a most learned Doctor, he had retained 
all the impetuosity of childhood. 

This alliance of naive veracity and great knowledge 
invested him with a peculiar charm, and there appeared 



j6 The Jesuits. 

to emanate from him an indescribable something 
.which was above nature. John of Braganca would 
have retained him in the Court of Portugal, where 
all hearts were drawn to God by the flood of love 
which fell from the lips of this young apostle ; but it 
was neither for Princes nor courtiers that he designed 
the treasures of his speech. 

He set sail on a vessel of the Indian fleet five 
months after the signature of the Bull, on the 7th of 
April, 1540. The Fathers Camerino and Mansella 
accompanied him. He arrived in the harbor of Goa 
in the month of May of the following year, after a 
long and dangerous passage, during which he had 
shown an example of piety, courage, and gayety to all. 
It was during this voyage that he first gained the sur- 
name of the " Holy Father," by which Mohammedans 
and idolaters, as well as Christians, henceforth dis- 
tinguished him. 

The quality of Christian, itself so glorious and 
beautiful, was not a condition favorable to gaining 
the confidence of these unfortunate and conquered 
peoples. Under the name of Christian, these un- 
happy beings had seen only the avaricious traffickers, 
cruel and dissolute men, steeped in vice, and, it may 
be added, loaded with crime. 

The oppression which these Portuguese merchants 
exercised throughout the Indies had attained a 
hideous excess, and it seemed as if Europe had ex- 



The First Fathers. J 7 

tended her conquests to the confines of the earth 
only to carry further the leprosy of her sordid and 
corrupt avarice. 

Xavier preached to the merchants before preaching 
to the natives, and he said to them : " How can you 
expect that I should advise, in the name of God, 
those who have no other fault than their blindness, to 
become what you are, loaded with such iniquity ? " 

There were, assuredly, no people more difficult to 
convert than these assemblages of our greedy adventu- 
rers whom our older civilizations had sent four hundred 
years ago to seek for fortune throughout the Indies and 
the New World ; and among these adventurers, those 
of the Peninsula, Spanish as well as Portuguese, had 
gained the worst renown. But there was an influence 
so irresistible in the speech of Xavier, a persuasion 
so powerful and overwhelming arose from the depths 
of his heart that the contractors of Goa, irritated at 
first by his boldness, finished by capitulating. To 
convert the inmates of a Portuguese counting-house 
was more difficult (and so his contemporaries deemed 
it) than to subjugate to the Faith the whole of India. 

As soon as Xavier had surmounted this obstacle, all 
others seemed to him easy to overcome, and in the 
midst of the priests of Sirah themselves, he could smile 
and say: "I have vanquished, with the help of God, 
the merchants of Goa." 

In an incredibly short space of time he had reached 



78 The Jesuits. 

Cape Comorin, and won over the Paravas by a mira- 
cle. A dying woman was cured by only touching the 
crucifix, and thousands of natives crowded about him, 
" observing his signs," guessing his unknown lan- 
guage. He had predicted the magic of the cross ; he 
witnessed its prodigies ; his crucifix spoke for him all 
the time that he was learning the Malabar language, 
and even in the days when he was acquainted with it, 
when the fatigue of incessant preaching overcame him, 
he was accustomed to ring his famous bell with one 
hand, and in the other held aloft the image of the dy- 
ing Redeemer, and entire villages hastened to bend 
their heads to the waters of baptism. 

It often happened — so great was his fatigue — that 
he was unable to raise his arms to pour the saving 
waters on the brows of the last flock of catechumens 
who would come at the close of his glorious day's 
work. 

And his heart was overwhelmed with torrents of joy, 
and a canticle of gladness arose from him ; he suffered 
cold, heat, hunger, and sickness; his naked feet bled, 
from the thorns of the road, but he complained of 
nothing, or rather seemed to enjoy all ; he went on his 
way, indefatigable and invulnerable ; still on earth, he 
walked already in heaven. 

The night, in place of reposing, he consumes in 
preparing his aids to instruct those who are well dis- 
posed, and often his simple auditory relapse into dead 



The First Fathers. 79 

silence ; they do not stir ; they hold their very breath, 
while exchanging all around a sign which says : (i Do 
not wake him." 

It is when the " Holy Father," conquered by excess- 
ive fatigue, had closed his eyes in spite of himself, 
that his waiting class, this class of humble savages who 
would study how to be martyrs, prolong as much as 
they can these furtive minutes during which sleep robs 
them of the attention of their beloved master. 

So much respect and ardent admiration had he 
aroused, that one of his principal efforts was to destroy 
among the children the idea that he was a God. 

Meanwhile, the success of his mission augmented 
with marvelous rapidity. In two years the harvest of 
auxiliaries that he has sown, almost reaches maturity. 
He has founded a seminary at Goa, his general head- 
quarters ; his first priests are approaching ordination ; 
he can attempt to-day what yesterday seemed impos- 
sible ; in truth, behold him penetrating further, always 
further ; he is no longer alone. In some weeks he 
baptized in Travancor ten thousand persons with his 
own hand. 

"You will not strike," Ignatius had said. 

Xavier put the armed troops to flight by means of 
the crucifix, and when an idolatrous village obstinately 
refuses to listen to his preaching, he asks of God the 
power to raise Lazarus, and Lazarus is raised from the 
dead. 



80 The Jesuits. 

All Travancor is converted at this miracle, stated in 
the Acts of the canonization of St. Francis Xavier. 

Ignatius was at Rome when he received the letter of 
his tenderly cherished son, announcing to him his tri- 
umphs, and asking for soldiers to retain these victories. 

Ignatius hastens to accede to his request. The re- 
cruits are embarked at Lisbon, but Xavier does not 
wait for their coming ; he has set off in a new direc- 
tion ; follow step by step the invasion of Grace ; be- 
hold Xavier in the isle of Wanar, then at Meliapour, 
he arrives at Malacca, besieged by the king of Achim, 

and his presence is equal to that of an army 

India is his. 

India no longer suffices him ; a mysterious finger 
directs him to Japan ; he goes thither, accompanied by 
three missionaries. It is now nine years since he has 
quitted Europe, and he has not allowed himself the re- 
pose of a single day. 

His arrival in India had been modest and unassum- 
ing ; at Japan, the vessel which carried him, landed at 
Friardo, where it was saluted by all the ordnance of 
the harbor. However, this proved there no certain 
augury of success. The obstacles, it is true, were not 
revealed at first, for Xavier was allowed to reach the 
capital and preach there in peace, but the strange and 
extravagant character, and the thoroughly corrupt 
manners of the Meaquins disconcerted for a time the 
man whom nothing had ever stopped in his career ; 



The First Fathers. 81 

he regrets having left India, and it needs all the 
force of his resignation to prosecute a work which he 
deems impossible. He redoubles his efforts. At 
length God, who has heard his prayers, measures the 
recompense by the sacrifice. After two years of an- 
guish, which cost him his life, Xavier is master of Japan. 

Does he pause at length ? No, he will never pause. 
He only changes his route. He has turned his eyes in 
the direction of the mighty and unknown land — China. 
Before undertaking this gigantic campaign, he returns 
again to Goa, where he receives the assurance that 
India counts half a million of Christians. " Glory to 
God ! the harvest here is great, let us go to sow the 
seed in other fields/' And he embarks for China. 

But God has measured the task, and marked the 
repose of this mighty apostle, fashioned on the model 
of those who first enlightened the world. The passage 
proves most unfortunate. 

At length the strength of Xavier, never accustomed 
to spare himself, gives out. After terrible suffering, 
they land him dying on a shore which is not that of 
China. His hour has come ; his companions gather 
around him weeping ; he presses his crucifix to his 
breast, smiles, and dies, repeating the last verse of the 
Canticle of Saint Ambrose : "In te Doniine, speravi ; 
non confundar in aeturnum. 



* In Thee, Lord, have I hoped ; let me not be confounded 

forever. 

6 



82 The Jesuits. 

He had attained the age of 45 years, twelve of 
which had been consumed in his apostleship. His 
memory is honored in the Church among those of the 
greatest saints. 

Of all the missions of Francis Xavier, the most 
fruitful in martyrs was that of Japan, where thousands 
of faithful natives and nearly one hundred Jesuit 
Fathers confessed the faith in torture. 

Ignatius lived four years after the death of Xavier. 
There remained now only three students of the Col- 
lege of Saint Barbara. He shed tears of sorrowful 
joy upon learning of the happy end of his friend and 
brother. 

His work had assumed the proportions of an em- 
pire. To speak here of only his remote conquests : 
three years before the death of Xavier, and at the 
time when the latter carried the light of faith to Japan, 
six members of the Society of Jesus landed on the 
shores of Brazil, and strove there so effectually that 
their popularity sufficed to counterbalance the hatred 
aroused by Portuguese commerce. Placed as media- 
tors between two barbarous hordes — one civilized, 
the other savage — the Fathers experienced less dif- 
ficulty with the devourers of human flesh than with 
the hungry seekers after gold, for they could put an end 
to the atrocious festivals of the cannibals, but could 
not quench the awful thirst of riches which devoured 
the Europeans. 



The First Fathers. 83 

The Portuguese colony of San Salvador ruled by 
canon law ; but the companions of the noble and 
learned Father Anchita were the masters by love, and 
the rulers by law were more than once obliged to take 
refuge as trembling suppliants behind these sons of 
charity who never refused them their protection. 

Later, the Portuguese metropolis shall take its 
revenge for so many benefits showered upon its 
colonies, for it shall be at Lisbon that the' killer of 
Fathers (matador dos Padres), Sebastian de Pombal, 
the philosopher of the eighteenth century, locks his 
dungeons and lights his funeral piles ! 

In 15 53, the preponderance of the Society was such 
in South America that Ignatius thought fit to create 
there a Province, as he had already made for the 
extreme East the Province of the Indies. 

At the same time Ignatius sent a holy ambassador 
to Fez and to Morocco to negotiate there the deliver- 
ance of the slaves. 

Ah ! hate was now fully aroused, as it saw the career 
of the Jesuits shaping itself in all its hated grandeur. 

Other Jesuits penetrated into Ethiopia, and even as 
far as Congo, there to seek or make Christians. 

For r a time the kings of Abyssinia were Catholic, 
but Protestant missionaries came, and the flood of 
idolatry remounted. 

Go 1 defend us from misjudging the conscience of 
Protestants in general. We only remark the obstacles 



84 The Jesuits. 

which they have always placed in the way of the prop- 
agation of the true Faith, and the inutility of their 
efforts to copy the Catholic missions, which they have 
everywhere essayed, and which have almost every- 
where proved unsuccessful, notwithstanding the im- 
mense material sources at their command. 

The apostles make a vow of poverty, and they suc- 
ceed ; the Protestant Church promises millions, and 
it fails. 

Ignatius was now more than sixty years of age. 
Notwithstanding the care which he took to conceal his 
life, he was among the most illustrious of his time. 
From the depths of his cell he had exercised an im- 
mense influence on passing events, and though he 
had assisted in person neither at the Council of Trent 
nor the Colloquy of Poissy; though his foot had 
never crossed the threshold of the palaces of princes, 
his spirit had everywhere made itself felt as well in 
the public assemblages, where sound the thunders of 
eloquence, as in the close retreats, where is murmured 
the mysterious language of the policies of kings. 

He had accomplished even more than he had prom- 
ised, and the outrages with which his enemies assailed 
him on all sides, rendered him justice in proclaiming 
him the veritable stumbling block in the way of the 
Reformation. 

One time he wished the repose of a workman who 
had terminated his day's labor. 



The First Fathers. 85 

But those who venerated him, reminded him, not 
without some severity, that for him who has pledged 
his life, there is no repose elsewhere than in the tomb. 

He obeyed. He remained and died General of the 
Order, on the thirty-first of July, 1536. 

In his life-time he never said : " I have done," but 
"I have seen." He had seen heresy, if not utterly 
vanquished, at least arrested in its formidable progress, 
and he saw infidel countries gain to the Faith more 
souls than had been drawn away from her fold by all 
the false prophets, with which this century, agitated 
by so many and such strange convulsions, abounded. 

He had seen reform, the true Catholic reform intro- 
duced by the Church throughout all her branches, 
already producing admirable results. 

To understand the part which he had taken in the 
accomplishment of these great things, one must not 
look to him nor to his religious posterity. That would 
be to evoke a suspected testimony. 

If one would be duly informed, he must turn to the 
records of the testimony contained in the u mountain 
of documents " accumulated by passion and rancorous 
hate. Here the invective of the wounded enemy 
glorifies the soldier who has made the wound ; each 
outrage brings with it honor, and it is from the writings 
of Protestants that Loyola and the Jesuits of his time 
take their letters of nobility. 

Twenty-two years, lacking two months, after the morn- 



86 The Jesuits. 

ing of the Assumption, when we saw the poor and crip- 
pled student climb alone the steep of Montmatre, at the 
moment when Ignatius, now an aged man, and still poor, 
but no longer alone, gave up to God his great mind 
and pious soul, he would see, with the clear eye of a 
saint, which extends over the earth, thirty houses, 
eighty colleges, upwards of one thousand Fathers, and 
one hundred thousand pupils, bearing the mysterious 
sign upon their foreheads, scattered over the surface 
of the earth. 



III. 

A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 

The better to proceed with the History of the 
Society of France, we will briefly finish beforehand 
with the grand movement of the evangelization of re- 
mote countries, splendidly inaugurated by Francis 
Xavier, continued so heroically by his successors, and 
which shall cease only with the life of the Order. 

Xavier had died without passing the mysterious 
barrier which separated China from the rest of the 
universe. 

The first of the Jesuits to obtain admission was 
Melchior Nunez, who traveled thither with some Portu- 
guese merchants, in the year 1556. 

He arrived at Canton, that enormous city, whose 
riches filled him with astonishment. 

Xavier had undoubtedly preached from the time of 
his arrival in pagan lands, but Xavier possessed the 
gift of miracles. Through a prudence which was for 
a long time imitated, and which bore its fruits, Father 
Melchior, whose greatest fear was to close, by any pre- 
mature movement on his part, the entrance which had 
been extorted from such zealous vigilance, abstained 

(87) 



88 The Jesuits. 

from all public preaching. The laws and customs of 
China are opposed to the dissemination of intelligence 
among the people. 

In 1563, five Jesuits accompanied the Portuguese 
ambassador thither and observed the same guarded 
line of action. 

Matthew Ricci was the first to penetrate as far as the 
court of Pekin, and not only breaks this regulation, 
but furthered, to a great extent, the work of evangeliza- 
tion in the Celestial Empire, where so many of the So- 
ciety of Jesus were to receive the palm of martyrdom. 

Ricci was the pupil of Father Valignani, a man who 
was the universal grammarian of the languages of the 
far East. 

The history of the education and the pains taken by 
Valignani to prepare his youthful apostles for the con- 
quest of martyrdom, makes one of the most curious and, 
at the same time, most touching pages that can be read. 

The Abbe Vertot narrates, in his " History of the 
Order of Malta," an old, but most interesting work, 
the adventure of Dundonne de Gozon, afterward Grand 
Master of Rhodes, who, to obtain the victory over a 
certain monster (dragon or serpent) which infested the 
Isle, constructed a figure of the animal and accustomed 
his pack of hounds to rush upon it. Up to this time, 
all who had been rash enough to attack the monster 
had been devoured, because it was covered with scales 
which afforded it a complete armor. 



A Glance at the Missions. 89 

Its hide was of the color of bronze and utterly im- 
penetrable to the sword ; but the Chevalier Dundonne 
had observed on the belly of the dragon a vulnerable 
point ; this was a large spot of a yellow hue, and he ac- 
cordingly devised a stratagem which the Abbe Vertot 
is right in pronouncing ingenious. 

He constructed in the same spot upon the figure, a 
hole as nearly alike in form and dimensions to the orig- 
inal as possible. This he closed with a door, which he 
painted exactly the shade of the yellow skin on the 
spot, and which appeared to open of itself, by means 
of a weight. When all was complete, the Chevalier 
loosed the hounds, having previously filled the inside 
of the figure with meat. 

The pack, as may be imagined, no sooner ap- 
proached the pasteboard dragon than they scented 
the food and rushed at the yellow door, which, at first, 
resisted, then opened and allowed the dogs to obtain 
their feast. 

For an entire month the Chevalier repeated this ex- 
ercise, so that the pack began to display a strong inter- 
est for the indicated spot as being the door which 
guarded their meal. 

At the end of a month, the Chevalier left the dogs 
three days without food, and then led them, no longer 
against the image, but to an encounter with the mon- 
ster in flesh and blood. According to his custom, the 
dragon vomited forth smoke and flames ; but the 



90 The Jesuits. 

dogs were not to be frightened ; they were in search 
of food. 

At length, the monster in his unwieldy struggles ex- 
posed the familiar spot, and the dogs recognizing their 
yellow door, tore a passage into the monster's body. 

I know not if Father Valignani, previous to Vertot's 
relating it, was aware of this anecdote, but certainly 
his plan of campaign, so laboriously worked out, bears 
some parallel to that of the Chevalier Dundonne. 

For the former also trained a pack, a band of 
heroes, to force an entrance into the interior of a mon- 
ster defended by impenetrable scales — China ; that 
land of improbabilities and fantastical novelties, a 
solid enigma, so well screened from the eager curiosity 
of the universe, that imagination pictures her famous 
wall of steel as guarding enchanted palaces erected by 
the genii of poetic romance. 

The pack of Father Valignani were hungry with the 
desire of saving souls, of extending civilization, of 
spreading knowledge, of spiritual strife, of martyrdom. 

The monster, armed to the teeth, possessed one vul- 
nerable point : was marked with one yellow spot, well 
concealed, but nevertheless a door which could be 
forced. 

The defect in the Chinese armor was a childish 
thirst for information, an innate curiosity, and an odd 
but subtle aptness for all pertaining to the study of 
Mathematics, Astronomy, Physic, or even Philosophy. 



A Glance at the Missions. pi 

The entire life of Father Valignani, preparer of 
apostles, as Warwick was creator of kings, had been 
spent before this closed door, devising for others the 
means of opening it, and not only that, but endeavor- 
ing also to find some way of establishing firmly within 
the open door those who should once have procured 
admittance. 

And where else beside in the institution of the 
Jesuits, so original in its grandeur, is there shown a 
similar appropriation of aptitude ? 

In our own day, Charles Fourier, a man of incon- 
testable talent, but still-born, or nearly so, as an influ- 
ence, because he forgot God and the law of God, in 
the fabrication of an ingenious toy which he called a 
phalanstery, believed himself to have invented the 
rational culture of vocations, from the stand-point of 
social utility. 

Unquestionably he had never read St. Ignatius ; 
him who lost no precious time in balancing card- 
houses of systems, but stole from Heaven that sacred 
fire, the knowledge of the human heart. 

And as it was before, so it shall be after, Fourier, 
with whose curious and puerile work perhaps it is 
not even acquainted, the Society of Jesus, from the 
stand-point of universal good and final salvation, 
has ever traversed, as ever will, with master hand, the 
keyboard of attractions and aptitudes. 

Among those whom Father Valignani prepared for 



92 The Jesuits. 

this novel and difficult undertaking, of which until 
then none had formed any idea, the young Fathers 
Pazio, Rugguri, and Matthew Ricci, came out of the 
ranks perfect instruments, especially Ricci, who was 
in all ways a living masterpiece of education. And 
if anything could be more astonishing than the bare 
recital of this skillful preparation, so appropriate even 
in the smallest particulars, it is the admirably correct, 
bold, and exact use which was made of the gymnastics 
taught for that epic struggle begun by Ricci and con- 
tinued by his successors. 

Xavier, the likeness or reflection of Christ, had per- 
formed countless prodigies ; in him was personified 
the genius of enthusiastic piety ; he commanded men 
and things from the heights of his love ; what he would 
have accomplished in China, if God had permitted 
him to touch its shores, all sanctified as he was by the 
grand victories of Japan and India, none can estimate ; 
but Xavier was dead. 

It was necessary to replace this divine talisman 
which he had won from Heaven, by the efforts of hu- 
man prudence, aided by Divine grace, without which 
all work is vain. 

It is on this account that Ricci, less supernatural 
than Xavier, excites, however, more interest through- 
out the pages of this Christian Odyssey. He is but 
man, struggling with the Chinese Empire — that enor- 
mous trifle, with every imaginable weapon \ he is at 



A Glance at the Missions. 93 

once, if one may use the illustration, an apostle and 
an adventurer — a Saint Paul and a Robinson Crusoe ; 
sublime, industrious, subtle, and daring ; playing with 
the eclipse like Christopher Columbus ; disdaining not 
the smallest detail necessary to the accomplishment 
of his object ; profiting by the high-road, but guessing 
which side-paths to traverse ; intrepidly piercing his 
way, but, in the face of an obstacle, drawing back 
without demur, only to try another route ; entitled to 
twice the privileges of all diplomatists, but gaining 
every inch of ground at the price of himself, his entire 
self, dispensed with an able economy, with an inex- 
haustible prodigality. 

He knows all — all which the Chinese know, in order 
to insinuate himself; all which they do not know in 
order to rule them. He is a twofold Jesuit, possess- 
ing at once the humility of a disciple and the com- 
manding spirit of a master. Every attack he can 
parry ; to every barrier he possesses a key. 

He knows their literature better than the literati 
themselves, and amid the mazes of their philosophy 
might guide Confucius himself. 

He has the mandarin geography of the earth at his 
finger ends ; how the globe, square as a tile, floats 
lazily in space under the protection of the emperor, 
Son of Heaven ; he is not ignorant of the gratitude 
which this same earth owes to the celestial Van Lei, 
the same emperor, who, at the bottom of his palace, 



94 The Jesuits. 

obligingly sustains it, and whose bounty of soul alone 
prevents it from falling at any moment into the abyss ; 
but he knows still better the true earth, such as Eu- 
rope represents it, voyaging through space, and the 
sun and planets, and entire svstem of the universe, as 
it was recognized at Paris; a well-invented system, 
and probably the true one. 

Above all, he could, at his choice, expatiate upon 
the odd opinions of their savants, or utterly astonish 
them by unexpected revelations of learning. In fact, 
knowledge which should be new to them, is the treas- 
ure that he has brought thither. If he so willed, 
he could, in place of announcing Christ, pass himself 
among them as a god, by nothing more than placing 
the first book of Euclid within the reach of the priests. 

Thus, after having had so much difficulty to pass 
the threshold of the empire, behold him, after some 
time, nearly naturalized therein. He writes to Father 
Valignani, then at Macao, to consult him on the 
choice of an official costume. Having been given the 
country, it is a question of the greatest gravity, and 
his former master advises him to adopt the ample robe 
and mitre of the Chinese savants. 

The choice is good ; Ricci adopts it, and thus at- 
tired pursues his journey, which is marked by as man}' 
fantastic as heroic adventures, as far as Nankin, where 
he marks out the site of the future house of the So- 
ciety, then goes on even to Pekin, where he is admit- 



A Glance at the Missions. 95 

ted (sovereign honor) to visit, not indeed Van Lei 
himself, who can not, in conscience, relax for a single 
instant his grasp of the square earth at the risk of los- 
ing it forever, but, at least, the empty throne of Van 
Lei — which amounts to the same thing, however — and 
which invests him with an influence equal to that 
of the mandarins of the best quality. 

You may readily believe that he does not pause on 
this happy road. Without any effort on his part, the 
rumor begins to be circulated that the Son of Heaven 
admits him into the secret of these particular meet- 
ings, where are determined questions of immeasur- 
able importance ; among others, the form of a new 
helmet which shall put the Tartars to flight without 
combat. 

This rumor, which had its birth among the people, 
at length reached the court ; and as there was no pos- 
sible control to be exerted by an invisible and dumb 
emperor, it came to pass, incredible as it appears, 
that the chief minister of the empire himself, adding 
faith to what was everywhere alleged, sued for the 
friendship of the supposed favorite, flattering him, and 
becoming his most obsequious follower. 

But what of God in all this ? And the Word of 
God ? What becomes of the apostolate in the midst 
of all these strange adventures? 

It should be readily understood that the apostolate 
here is all, and there is nothing but the apostolate. 



g6 The Jesuits. 

These adventures are only the windings of the road 
along which the apostle is ever moving. 

Extraordinary prudence, and most delicate ma- 
nceuverings are needed to arrive at the first preaching. 

Nothing here resembles what is seen in any other 
part of the world. The Chinese understand every- 
thing, but play with everything ; they discuss all, but 
evade all, though desirous to know everything. The 
great question is, how to utilize these materials ? In or- 
der to build, it is necessary to reconcile these contrasts. 

The subtility of their minds is satisfied, to a certain 
degree, by the evident grandeur of the Christian law, 
but they admit Christ only under reserve, and to the 
Cross exclusively. 

This childish though ancient people, this half-polish- 
ed, half-savage aristocracy, where each mandarin is in 
reality only a grotesque figure, can not accept the hu- 
miliation of the Cross. They can understand all the 
rest, but this, no. It is not Chinese. Never would a 
Chinese have submitted to it. A Chinese will open his 
stomach without repugnance, but will not attach him- 
self to the Cross. And from the moment that the 
God of the Christians transgressed the law of de- 
corum, how can the Chinese adore Him longer ? 

For a long, long time this obstacle proved abso- 
lutely insurmountable. Ricci had gained the battle 
over all other things, but Chinese obstinacy disputed 
the ground with him inch by inch at this last point. 



A Glance at the Missions. 97 

The great pride humbled itself, but not the puerile 
vanities, and the very life of this fantastic people is 
made up of boasting, competitions, and petty strata- 
gems, all having for their object the satisfaction of 
their childish vainglory ; it nourishes, through self-love, 
the most gigantic fooleries, microscopic monstrosities, 
which astonish logic, disconcert reason, and open up 
at every step, along the apparently level path, abysses 
which are both ridiculous and terrible. 

Still, however, results had been obtained which 
may be styled enormous. Churches had been erected ; 
seminaries, before completion, had been filled. 

Priests might be seen bearing the Blessed Sacra- 
ment, and the converted mandarins were counted by 
the hundreds. 

Chinese apostles there were even, true, invincible 
confessors of faith, among whom, Paul Sin, the ad- 
mirable orator, the great Mandarin Li, and numbers 
of others, shine with peculiar radiance. 

These were men of the antique type, whose virtue 
and learning adorned the primitive Church. 

Elsewhere, under such favorable conditions, one 
might regard the foundations of one of the largest and 
grandest Christendoms of the earth, as firmly estab- 
lished ; but we are writing of China, and, in this coun- 
try of nightmares, one is always fearful of being awak- 
ened w r ith a start. 

They were awakened. 
7 



98 The Jesuits. 

And, as all calculation is ever set at defiance, by 
the events which occur among this extravagantly 
original people, where strangers themselves speedily 
become infected with the malady of the impossible, it 
came about that they were awakened by a persecution 
which came neither from the Chinese priests, nor the 
governors, nor the mandarins, nor the emperor, but — I 
may as well state at once, for the reader would never 
divine from whence — from ecclesiastical authority. 

It frequently happens that the Church, infallible in 
herself, has some untrustworthy soldiers in the ranks 
of her vast army. These blemishes are lost in the 
glory of the whole, but they have existed, and do 
exist. 

In the year 1606, the eighteenth of the able and 
fruitful apostleship of Matthew Ricci, the ecclesiastical 
authority in those remote regions was vested in the per- 
son of the Vicar-General of Macao, where a Jesuit col- 
lege was established. The rector of this college had 
been chosen as arbitrator in a dispute pending between 
the Vicar-General and a Franciscan monk, which he 
decided in favor of the latter. In the heat of his in- 
dignation, the Vicar-General launched an interdict 
against the Franciscans, the Jesuits, the government 
of the city, and the city itself.* 

At the same time, a more violent demonstration was 



Cr£tineau-Joly, p. 173, and following. 



A Glance at the Missions. 99 

excited against the Jesuits in Canton, by a worthy 
effort of the Chinese imagination, which accused the 
Jesuits of building citadels, and planning, with the 
Portuguese and Japanese fleets, the invasion of the 
country. 

But little was needed to inflame the populace. En- 
tire provinces rose up in arms against the Christians ; 
they threatened a general massacre, and Father Mar- 
tinez was put to death by torture. 

This was a violent, but transient storm. Ricci soon 
calmed the tempest, and shortly after established a 
house of the Novitiate in the very center of Pekin. 

When God called this faithful servant to Himself, 
four years later, the entire population of the capital 
followed the cross which led his funeral procession, 
and Father Schail, successor to this truly great man, 
prospered in his heritage. 

Adam Schail, no less illustrious than Ricci, was in- 
volved in all the revolutions with which that era among 
the Chinese was rife, and which finally culminated in 
a change of dynasty. At his death the Jesuits had one 
hundred and fifty public churches, and thirty-eight 
houses or colleges. After the second persecution — of 
which we say nothing, through respect for an illustri- 
ous Order — another period of prosperity followed un- 
der Fathers Verbust, Gerbillon, Perennin, and Gaubil. 
which lasted many years, during -which the scientific 
and literary attainments of the Chinese mission were 



ioo The Jesuits, 

the glory of the Church and the admiration of the 
savants of Europe. 

We must not imagine that the great effort of the 
Jesuits in China had made them abandon India. They 
had evangelized Mogul, Ceylon, Bengal, and Coro- 
mandel. At the close of the sixteenth century we find 
the seminary at Goa sending confessors beyond the 
Ganges, even to the Indus. Robert di Nobili, 
nephew of Popes and Emperors, becomes the apostle 
of the Brahmins, whilst others evangelize the Pariahs. 
The most illustrious among these, Jean de Bretto, son 
of the Viceroy, shed his blood in Madiiras. 

Bengal, Thibet, Tartary, Syria, Persia, and Armenia 
see the cross planted, and hear the Gospel preached by 
the Jesuits. The Faith penetrates with them into the 
deserts of Africa, the Empires of Abyssinia and Mo- 
rocco, and the coasts of CafTre, Mozambique, and 
Guinea. 

But it is especially on the New World that they seek 
to place the yoke of Christian civilization. There they 
have not only the ferocity of the savages to conquer ; 
their most bitter enemies are the Calvinist Corsairs — 
English, Hollanders, and, alas ! French also, who, no 
less cruel than the Peaux-Rouget, massacre every 
Jesuit who falls into their hands. 

Such are their orders. Calvin himself has particu- 
larly designated the Society of Jesus as their chief and 



A Glance at the Missions ioi 

mortal enemy." He does not say, "Kill this one 
or that one ;" but he says : " Here is an obstacle ; re- 
move it." 

His command is only too faithfully obeyed. Thus 
perished on the fifteenth of July, 1570, within sight of 
Palma, the blessed Ignatius of Azevedo and his thirty- 
nine companions, destined for the missions of Brazil. 
A few days later, thirty others shared a like fate. 

The Society of Jesus lost seventy-one victims to the 
rage of these heretics. It was the crusade of piracy. 
Sourie, Capdeville, and others reaped for themselves a 
twofold good by thus infesting the seas ; on one hand, 
enriching themselves by the spoils of their victims ; 
on the other, gaining the Calvinistic heaven by the 
slaughter of missionaries wherever they encountered 
them. 

But all the missionaries did not fall under the blows 
of these pirates, the malcontents of Catholic morality. 

Those who escaped their sabres and the empoison- 
ed arrows of the Indians, traversed these deserts and 
began another Crusade. Enough survived for this 
holy war, and it was by their efforts that Canada, so 
French even in our own day, was first subjugated to 
the Catholic faith and the French dominion, after the 
most strenuous efforts, even at the price of the blood 
of these heroes of religion and patriotism, who died 
for God and France and who reap in heaven the 
glory of being forgotten in the ingratitude of earth, 



102 The Jesuits. 

and whose names, at least, I will inscribe on these 
pages — Joques, Baniel, and Brebeuf, the noble follow- 
ers of Cham plain. 

Who has not heard of the Catholic governments of 
Paraguay, those famous " Reductions" so praised by 
Robertson, Albert de Haller, Buffbn, Montesquieu, 
Chateaubriand, and of which Voltaire said : " The 
Establishments of the Spanish Jesuits alone in Para- 
guay seem, in some respects, the triumph of human- 
ity ? " Unhappily, we shall be compelled to speak of 
Paraguay again, and of the cruel recompense which 
was reserved for the Jesuits by the contemporaries of 
Voltaire. 

In another part of South America, Carthagena, the 
Jesuits performed wonders of charity. Even as in 
India, they had made themselves Pariahs in order to 
convert the Pariahs, and Brahmins in order to convert 
the Brahmins ; so, now, the blessed Father Claver be- 
comes, as far as possible, a negro — nay, even more 
than a negro, he becomes the " slave of slaves V — in 
order to preach the truths of religion, and awaken 
some of its sentiments within these miserable victims 
of European cupidity. 

One must read his story in order to understand the 
wide difference which separates Philanthropy from 
Charity. 

As for Claver, he has no power to liberate the slaves, 
but he waits in the place of sale to which they are 



A Glance at the Missions. 103 

driven, like so many cattle. Sick, poor, dying with 
fatigue, he nevertheless bears to them, on his shoulders, 
his burden of begged provisions ; he nurses these cap- 
tives, gives them to drink, laves their faces, bathes 
their feet, and kisses away their tears, exclaiming, 
" Oh ! my brothers ! my friends ! my dear masters ! 
what would you ask of me ? Do not fear to exact 
everything from your servant, even his life, for I belong 
to you ; you have bought me in Jesus Christ ! I, 
Peter Claver, am the slave of slaves forever." 

Other instances of intense devotion are frequent; 
witness that of Father de Rhodes, at Tonk-kirig; 
Father Cabral, in Thibet and Nepaul ; Fathers Men- 
drano and Figueroa, at New Grenada ; and Jean de 
Arcos, at Caraccas. 

It was here that the Jesuits, for the first time, were 
accused of mixing themselves in commercial affairs 
because they furnished to their neophytes, at a dis- 
count, the goods for which the real dealers charged 
them usurious prices. Behold, their unpardonable 
crime ! Better to attempt to pass between the tree 
and its bark than to interfere between the merchant 
and his profits. . 

Neither time nor evidence can extinguish the hatred 
of those to whom the only wrong done by the Jesuits 
was to reduce their too enormous profits, and you may 
still encounter those who will inform you that the 
Jesuits maintain mighty, though invisible, fleets on the 



104 The Jesuits. 

ocean which sail to and fro with marvelous rapidity, 
carrying goods of an unknown nature from mysterious 
consignors. 

When a Jesuit involves himself in business affairs — 
and of this there exists a mournful and too well-known 
example — the Order interdicts him, expels him, and 
ruins itself in paying a debt it never contracted. And 
notwithstanding, the Order suffers' for the fault of a 
single member ! 

We will recount the iniquitous proceedings to which 
history has given the name of the trial of Father de la 
Valette. 

The Jesuits do not interfere with commerce. They 
give, but never sell. They possess neither stores nor 
fleets, though they never contradict the false asser- 
tions to the contrary. 

You will look in vain, in their books, for the proofs 
of their zeal, their courage, and their persistent charity. 
Rarely do they put forth a denial even to the most 
startling accusations, and it is really amongst their 
enemies that you must seek for the refutation of the 
absurd calumnies advanced against them. 

"It is a remarkable fact that the authors who 
censure, in the severest terms, the licentious manners 
of the regular Spanish monks, all accord a tribute of 
respect to the conduct of the Jesuits. Governed by a 
more perfect discipline than that of the other Orders, 
or actuated by the desire of preserving the honor of the 



A Glance at the Missions. 105 

Society, so dear to each of its members, the Jesuits, 
as well in Mexico as in Peru, have preserved an irre- 
proachable regularity of manners." 

It was not a Jesuit who wrote this ; not even a 
Catholic* 

How far removed is this tribute of a Protestant, an 
honest man and intelligent writer, from the infamous 
falsehoods which defile our books and journals. 

Previous to the ministry of Choiseul, under which 
was consummated that suppression of the Jesuits which 
Montalembert, after Montyon, has termed, " the 
greatest iniquity of modern times," let us glance briefly 
at the general state of the missions founded among the 
infidels, by the disciples of Ignatius, in the most diverse 
countries of the world. To begin with the Jesuits of 
Portugal. Between the time of 1551 and 1623, a 
period of seventy-two years, they had sent six hundred 
and sixty-two missionaries to the Indies, and two 
hundred and twenty-two to Brazil, thus allowing a rate 
of twelve a year ; and numbered in 16 16, two hundred 
and eighty in the Province of Goa, and one hundred 
and eighty in that of Brazil, which, in 1759, contained 
four hundred and forty-five. 

The mission of Japan counted, in 1581, one hun- 
dred and fifty thousand Christians, two hundred church- 
es, and fifty-nine missionaries. In China, in the year 



Robertson, "History of America," Vol. X., p. 27. 



io6 The Jesuits. 

1680, the single Province of Nankin contained more than 
one hundred thousand Christians. As for the Indies, 
Father Laynez baptized in Maduras fifteen thousand 
idolaters, in the course of six months, in the year 1699. 

In 1763, America counted in Peru alone, five hun- 
dred and twenty-six Jesuits ; in Mexico, five hundred 
and seventy-two ; at Noveau Royaume (New Cartha- 
gena), one hundred and ninety-five ; at Quito, two 
hundred and nine ; at Chili, two hundred and forty- 
two. At Maragnon, Father Vieyra da Silva, in 1167, 
organized fifty Christian villages, on something over 
four hundred leagues of coast. 

The missions of the Levant, founded by Henry IV., 
and revived by Louis XIV., propagated the Faith, and 
with it the French influence, in Greece, Constanti- 
nople, Persia, Smyrna, throughout the Archipelago, in 
Armenia, the Crimea, Chaldea, Syria, and Fgypt. 

Such was the prosperous situation of affairs, ever 
tending toward the enlargement of the missions of 
the Order, at the moment when a cruel tyranny, 
urged by the representations of a Pombal, an Aranda, 
and a Choiseul, destroyed the work of so much effort 
and so many years, whose foundations extended 
throughout the universe, and which resembled a great 
empire. The mind is astounded at the idea of such 
insignificant men, who showed themselves so disast- 
rously incapable in their several administrations, 
being able to destroy such a gigantic work. 



A Glance at the Missions. 107 

We say nothing here of the Portuguese, the Spanish, 
nor the French minister, because w'e shall devote a 
portion of this book to the study of each in turn. 

It will repay the trouble of perusing, not on account 
of what they have accomplished, for their work is 
naught, but because of the moral and material treas- 
ure which they have destroyed in the blindness of 
their hate. 

Whilst a large number among the Jesuits devoted 
themselves to the conversion of idolatrous peoples, 
others endeavored to stem the tide of heresy and 
schism throughout Europe. 

We have seen Lefevre, Le Jay, and Bobadilla, three 
of the original Jesuits, oppose themselves to the in- 
numerable army of apostates and rebels who filled 
Germany with sacrilege and murder. They were soon 
followed into the arena by the blessed Peter Canisius,* 
one of the noblest figures of the Order — a man en- 
dowed with the most persuasive eloquence, the pro- 
foundest science, and as fertile in resources as a 
polemist. The Lutherans themselves said of him : 
" There is no way of resisting the truth that this man 
proclaims." 



* Born on the 8th of May, 1521, at Nimeguen ; died the 
21st of December, 1597, at Freiburg, in Switzerland ; 
beatified on the 20th of August, 1864, by Pope Pius IX. 



108 The Jesuits. 

But his charity was his most distinguishing charac- 
teristic ! 

At Ingolstadt, Canisius and Salmeron, both eminent 
Professors of the University, were seen each day leav- 
ing their chairs to minister to the sick in the hospitals, 
or instruct the little children in the schools or even 
public places. 

As a recompense for this they naturally received 
persecution. 

Canisius, writing to Father Laynez, who had be- 
come General of the Society on the death of Loyola, 
says : " Our enemies, by the calumnies which they 
circulate concerning me, have made for me a reputa- 
tion which I dare not lay claim to for myself. They 
honor the other Fathers in a similar manner. Soon, 
perhaps, words will be replaced by blows and other 
cruel treatment. 

" Thank heaven, the more they endeavor to decry 
us, the more eager we are to show them all charity. 

"They are our persecutors, but they are our brothers 
also. We are bound to love them, because of the 
love of Jesus Christ, who shed His blood for them, and 
because they sin, perhaps through ignorance." 

I can not refrain from remarking here that these 
beautiful thoughts, so discreetly expressed, constitute 
what its enemies term, par excellence, " Jesuitism " ; 
that is to say, visible hypocrisy. What avowal do 
those who can not, nor will not, believe in the honesty 



A Glance at the Missions. 109 

nor the goodness of the human heart, suffer to escape 
them ? 

Their creed should be written on their foreheads. 
We deny that which we are incapable of ourselves. 

Jesuitism 'is Charity, reviled by men who are so far 
removed from it as never to have experienced it nor 
even seen it. 

Meanwhile the minds of many were convinced. 
Everywhere the souls of many were converted. " The 
Jesuits," says a Protestant writer, Dr. Leopold Ranke, 
speaking of their labors in Germany, " lack neither 
zeal nor prudence. One sees them successfully spread- 
ing throughout their vicinities, and attracting the 
masses. Their churches are the most frequented. 
Should they discover anywhere a Lutheran well-versed 
in the Bible, and who, by virtue of it, holds great sway 
in his vicinity, they employ every means of converting 
him, and nearly always they are successful, being so 

habituated to controversy The Electoral Prince 

of Mayence, Schweickhard, Maximilian of Bavaria, 
and the Archduke Ferdinand, all the eminent men, 
come from the school of the Jesuits ; so capable of 
engendering great ideas within the minds of their 
students." 

These princes were themselves reformers, and they 
have realized by their faith the religious restoration. 

Do you perceive now what role was played by those 
who are so readily termed the obscurantists, in 



HO The Jesuits. 

the history of superstition ? Witness the biography of 
Father Frederic de Spec,* for instance, one of the 
most renowned writers of his time. Indignant at the 
frequent abuse of the criminal process then in force 
against sorcerers, he undertook, with rare courage, 
their defense against their blinded judges and a fanatic 
public. His book, " Causa Criminalis," produced 
such an impression in France and Germany, that from 
the time of its publication, notwithstanding the credu- 
lity of the people and the faulty tribunals, the absurd 
and sanguinary legislation which had regulated Europe 
for so many centuries, steadily fell into disuse. 

Shortly after, in 1635, Father de Spec happened to 
be in Treves when the Imperialist forces seized that 
city, occupied by the French. The Jesuit by his zeal 
and courage saved that great city from pillage, and 
the captives from death. Four hundred French pris- 
oners obtained their lives and liberty, together with 
clothes and an authorized conduct, enabling them to 
return to their own country. 

But pestilence followed war, and Father de Spec 
could not follow those whom his efforts had saved ; 
he remained to supply the needs of the sick, and then 
soon after expired, aged forty years, on the field of 
honor and charity. 

During the reign of Henry VIII. , Salmeron and 



Born at Kaiserwerth, near Dusseldorf, in 1591. 



A Glance at the Missions. in 

Pasquier Brouet had traversed England and Ireland, 
in order to console and strengthen the Catholics under 
the terrible persecution to which they were subjected. 
Bat to a constant peril, a constant safeguard must be 
afforded. 'Under the sanguinary reign of Elizabeth, 
whose edicts recall those of Nero and Diocletian,* a 
mission of twelve Jesuits was organized under the 
direction of Edmund Campian and Robert Persons, 
both former members of the University of Oxford. A 
price was set upon their heads, and they were aware 
of it. " We have so much to do here," writes Father 
Persons, " that often we pause oply for two hours at 
most, just sufficient to enable us to take a short re- 
pose." 

The illustrious Doctor Allen assures us that in the 
space of a year, the Fathers had gained more souls in 
England than they could during -a life-time in other 
places. "The number of Catholics," he adds, "is 
estimated at ten thousand more than last year." 

But the shedding of blood was needed to perfect 
the apostles' work. Edmund Campian was the first 
to lay down his life ; after him, several of his brethren 
gathered the palm of martyrdom— Jean Cornelius, 



* Example : From the 15th of July to the 31st of August, 
15S0, warrants were issued against fifty thousand Cath- 
olics, who were accused and thrown into prison, and pun- 
ished with confiscation, banishment, and a great number 
with capital punishment. 



112 The Jesuits. 

Robert Southwell, Henry Walpole,* Thomas Bosgrave ? 
Roger Filcock, Francis Page, Henry and Thomas Gar- 
nett, Thomas Holland, Rodolphe Corby, Henry Mors, 
Richard Bradley, Cansfied, Cuthbert Prescott, and Ed- 
mund Neville. These martyrs were first hung from 
the gallows, then cut down alive and quartered, after 
having had their entrails plucked out. "Ibant Gau- 
dentes,"t as was to be said three hundred years later 
of one of the companions of the beloved Father Oli- 
vraint in marching to his death. Their canticle was 
silenced only when their hearts ceased to beat. 

It is of their persecutors that Voltaire has written, 
" The absurdity of these fanatics was joined to fury ; 
they were at once the most foolish and the most ter- 
rible of men." 

We joyfully cite this testimony of a mind which God 
had gifted so wonderfully with all save the inestimable 
boon of faith. 

He has brought against the Society numerous accu- 
sations which bear the stamp of falsity, but numerous 
also are the pages where his pen seeks to do them 
justice. 

The cruelty of their insane persecutors was con- 
quered by the wisdom of these sages, who knew how 
to die ; and after that long and fierce persecution, the 



* He had three brothers and a cousin in the Society, 
f They went rejoicing. 



A Glance at the Missions. 113 

Catholic faith, thanks to the labors of the apostles 
and the blood of the martyrs, became firmly rooted 
in England, and flourished anew there. 

The proof that Protestantism, which appeared so 
completely victorious at first, was checked in its 
triumphant career, is the fact that all the Northern 
countries of Europe wavered in it at the same time. 
The " plague of Jesuits," as they were termed by the 
preachers of the Reformation, had overrun those king- 
doms where Christiern prostituted the mitre to a valet. 

Where, not long before, Gustavus Wasa had over- 
thrown the images of Mary, Eather Anthony Possevin * 
preached anew the Gospel, and both kings and people 
returned obedient to his voice. He traveled to Stock- 
holm, received there the secret abjuration of the King 
of Sweden, John III., and took the route to Moscow. 
There the confessor showed himself a diplomat of the 
first order; he negotiated at Kremlin the peace be- 
tween the Czar, John IV., and the Poles ; then joy- 
fully abandoning this brilliant role, he returned to Pa- 
dua to modestly resume in that city his functions of 
professor and preacher. Admiration is not even al- 
lowed for this absolute obedience practiced with so 
much humility ; it is the Rule, and in this instance hu- 
mility was particularly fruitful ; for out of the hands 
of this master came St. Erancis de Sales. 



* Born at Mantua in 1534. 
8 



H4 The Jesuits. 

Less than fifty years after the death of Possevin, two 
of his brethren, seconded by Rene Descartes, that illus- 
trious pupil of the Jesuits, converted the daughter of 
Gustavus Adolphus to Catholicism. Doctor Ranke, the 
Protestant, to whose impartiality we have already borne 
honorable testimony, wrote as follows : " The activity 
of the Jesuits made itself felt, throughout the Provinces, 
among the people of Livonia, in Lithuania, where they 
had to combat the ancient worship of serpents ; 
among the Greeks, where often the Jesuits were the 
only Catholic priests ; and in Poland, where hundreds 
of Religious of the Society of Jesus consecrated them- 
selves to the revival of the Catholic faith." 

Here, however, their work received the seal of the 
cross. Andrew Bobola,* cruelly martyred by the 
schismatic Cossacks, was henceforth to be in heaven 
the new patron of Catholic Poland. 

We will close this brief summary of the missions on 
the two continents by a few remarks upon the work 
of the 'Jesuits among the great Catholic nations in 
Italy, Spain, and Portugal ; the countries of Germany 
remaining faithful to Rome, which were the Low 
Countries and Austria. As for France, we shall de- 
vote to it a special chapter. 



* Born in Poland in 1590 ; died for the faith at Yanov on 
the 16th of May, 1657 ; beatified by Pope Pius IX., 30th 
of October, 1853. The martyred Father Olivraint has writ- 
ten the life of this martyr. 



A Glance at the Missions. 115 

Certain it is that two at least among these nations 
verified the assertion brought against them by one of 
the most hostile writers of the enemies of the Society, 
the apostate Huber, of Munich. " The Order," he 
says, " obtained in a short time surprising advantages 
over Protestantism , the ' reform ' movement was 
stifled in Italy, and thrown back in the Northern 
countries of Germany." In support of this statement, 
Huber employs the grand testimony of Macaulay. 
" Protestantism," says this noble writer, " was arrested 
in its victorious march, and repulsed with a giddy 
rapidity at the foot of the Alps, on the borders of the 
Baltic. 

"The Order had been only a century in existence, 
and already it had filled the entire world with monu- 
ments of its sufferings, and its grand struggle for the 
faith." 

" In short, Rome, Venice, and Padua, and the entire 
Italian Peninsula, as well as the immense empire 
which united under one scepter Austria,. Spain, and 
Flanders, saw the Jesuits for more than two centuries 
combating error, defending the true faith, re-establish- 
ing ecclesiastical discipline, propagating piety by their 
example, preaching charitable works for the relief of 
the sick and poor; opening asylums to suffering, to 
indigence, to repentance, and old age, and forming in 
youth the admirable virtues that we admire in a Louis 
de Gonzaga, or a Stanislaus Kostka. 



Ii6 The Jesuits. 

Again, look at the altars raised on all sides in honor 
of saints whom the Society had filled with its own 
spirit. u Rome venerated Saint Ignatius, and Saint 
Francis Borgia ; Naples, Saint Francis de Hieronimo ; 
Spain, the blessed Alphonso Rodriquez; Belgium, 
the blessed John Berchmans ; Holland, Catholic Swit- 
zerland, and the Tyrol, the blessed Peter Canisius ; 
France, Saint John Francis Regis.* 

And how did all these men arrive at the heights 
of Christian perfection ? By the exact and heroic ob- 
servation of the rules of their Institute ; by the prac- 
tice of obedience, such as Saint Ignatius defined it, by 
their devotion to good works, and by faithfully retain- 
ing the spirit of the Society of Jesus, which can suffer 
persecution, and even be for a time destroyed, but 
which none has ever dreamed of reforming, because 
no one has ever called it corrupt, except the u Soli- 
taries "f of Port-Royal, to whom Voltaire himself has 
replied, and those worthy people whose trade it is to 
sell flayed Jesuit, and whom assuredly none will take 
the trouble to answer. 

There is, however, one trifle which deserves a pass- 
ing notice which should be refuted. It is the fashion 
among the copyists of " dictionnaires," which have 



* Born the 31st of January, 1597 ; died 31st of December, 
1716 ; canonized the 5th of April, 1737, by Pope Clement 
XII. 

f The French Jansenists. 



A Glance at the Missions. 117 

faithfully transmitted the same fooleries since the " En- 
cyclopedique " deluge, to proclaim from the housetops 
the decadence of the countries which remain firm in the 
Faith, and to attribute to the Jesuits the cause of this 
torpor. 

Among other infected countries, they cite Austria, 
Spain, and Portugal. But yesterday they cited Mexi- 
co ; but since Juarez, they presume to do so no longer. 

Why not Italy ? And especially why not Belgium ? 
Are they so convinced that the diadem shall remain 
so securely on the brow of England, who sees heresy 
at work within her, and who already questions per- 
haps, if Protestantism be at bottom a good bargain ? 

Much has been remarked on the inferiority of 
Catholic countries. For my part, I grant it to any ex- 
tent, because I do not measure human grandeur ex- 
clusively by the acquisition of the hundred-cent piece ; 
and the American god, whether it be the dollar or the 
revolver, does not inspire me with any species of rev- 
erence ; but even admitting the decadence of certain 
Catholic countries, is it comparable to the horrible in- 
testinal corruption of certain Protestant countries? It 
is not necessary to name these countries ; but who does 
not know them ? 

Again, were not these Catholic peoples, Catholic in 
the time of their splendor? Were they not more 
Catholic then than they are to-day ? Have they not 
gradually fallen away, little by little, according as they 



n8 The Jesuits. 

lost faith, as they imbibed the poison of indifference 
and incredulity ? 

As for casting the odium of this decline upon the 
Jesuits, whom does it make appear ridiculous ? Is it 
necessary to impute to them the progress of a disease 
which they have so energetically combated ? 

Moreover, the Jesuits have been driven from most 
Catholic States, chiefly, by the very ones who have 
enervated and weakened these States ; they have been 
driven from the midst of the prosperity which their 
efforts had so largely contributed to produce in those 
States ; and their fruitful labor in those States has been 
replaced by — 

But of what use to say by what ? 

Has Spain, Portugal, the Kingdom of Naples, the 
Duchy of Parma, the Empire of Austria, all the States 
which have driven out the Jesuits, been so prosperous 
since in their internal affairs ? 

And France? 

If they have been prosperous, why do they com- 
plain ? 

If, on the contrary, they have regretted the absence 
of the Jesuits, as history testifies, whom do they hope 
to befool in attributing to the agents of prosperity the 
misfortunes which were only produced after their un- 
just and ill-omened expulsion? Let each be at least 
responsible for his acts. 

If what was pure gold in the hands of the Jesuits 



A Glance at the Missions. 119 

changes into lead in the hands of their spoliators, 
whose the fault ? 

Has the reader yet discovered, by what he has read 
so far, the motives of the truly extraordinary hate 
which has ever attended the Society of Jesus ? 

I myself answer, Yes and No. 

Yes, for the enemies of the Church; no, for its 
friends. 

The enemies of the Church have good reason to 
hate the Jesuits ; the friends of religion have cause to 
esteem and love them. 

It is not our intention to give to these words any 
meaning which would tend to confound the servants 
with the master, the Jesuits with the Church. The 
Society of Jesus is nothing in comparison with the 
Church, which alone has the promise of immor- 
tality. 

The Society of Jesus could disappear, without one 
stone of the divine edifice being disturbed. 

But " all the enemies of the Church are in a special 
manner the enemies of the Jesuits." 

This is their peculiar recommendation to the confi- 
dence of Catholics. 

u It is an unparalleled glory for the Society of Jesus 
that the enemies of the Church should unanimously 
strike at it, denounce it, and calumniate it ; a singular 
privilege, a glorious prerogative, which has made their 



120 The Jesuits. 

name the most glorious that could be borne by Chris- 
tians in the times in which we live."* 

We have cast a glance at their work outside of 
France. Let us now turn our eyes homeward, and see 
what they have done here to merit their name being 
used as the crowning insult, applied not only to every 
priest, to every Catholic, but to every honest man, 
honestly seeking to serve his country. 

Read the standard journals, enter the " good " clubs, 
and you will hear there the name Jesuit, applied in- 
discriminately to advocates, property owners, states- 
men of every shade of politics, to all those who know 
how to read, but not how to howl. Jesuits is applied 
to gendarmes, prefects, marshals, and Brothers of the 
Christian Doctrine ; to Protestant pastors themselves 
the name is called ; to magistrates ; to soldiers. Jesuits ! 
Jesuits ! Jesuits ! 

Never has an equal fury rendered men illustrious. 

If there be not glory in this, where is it ? 



* Count de Montalembert, speech in the Chamber of Peers, 
8th of May and nth of June, 1844. 



IV. 
FRANCE. 

The hour in which the lame mendicant of the Col- 
lege of Saint Barbara toiled up the steep of Mont- 
matre was an eventful one for our ancestors. France, 
baptized with Clovis, glorified by Charlemagne, plant- 
ed with the palm of St. Louis, was essentially a Chris- 
tian country, but still experienced the consequences 
of the religious and political revolution which con- 
vulsed Germany, Switzerland, and England. 

Desolation spread beyond her frontiers ; within, Cal- 
vin steadily forged his armor. 

Between the vow of Montmatre and the Bull of Paul 
III., Calvin had brought to light his " Christian Insti- 
tution," and thus founded the sect from whence should 
spring the Huguenots,* and with them civil and more 
dire calamity, religious war, " plus quam civilia bella." 

The smoldering fire already sent forth sparks and 
smoke. 

Some years later the Amboiset conspiracy should 
betray the fanatical aspirations of the so-called " re- 
formers.' J 



1536. 1 156a 

(121) 



122 The Jesuits. 

At this perilous juncture, the role of the new-born 
Society could not be mistaken ; it fulfilled precisely 
the end for which it was instituted ; devoting itself to 
the Catholic, which had already become the national 
cause. At the solicitation of the Cardinal of Lorraine, 
and several other wise and learned prelates, Henry II. 
had, in 1550, granted letters patent to the Society of 
Jesus.* 

But both the declared and secret enemies of the 
Catholic Faith feared these new comers too much not 
to oppose, with all their force, their establishment in 
France. The Huguenots and politicians worked so 
effectually that Parliament, whose opposition, coeval 
with the existence of the Order, remained unwavering 
to the end, refused to register the royal letters. t 

Two years later, a new edict was the occasion of 
new opposition, favored by the death of the king. 

Francis II. reiterated three times his injunctions on 
the subject. Charles IX. returned to the charge with 
no more success, so deeply had the spirit of rebellion 
and repugnance to all that was essentially Catholic, 
infested the haughty magistracy. 

Finally, on the 15th of September, 1561, the Col- 
loquy of Poissy to which Parliament, taking refuge in 



* Letters Patent of the 12th of February, 25th of April, and 
the 9th of October, 1550. 

f Letters Patent of the 4th and 18th of March, 1561. 



France. 123 

subterfuge, had referred the case, solemnly received 
the Jesuits into France, under some restrictive clauses, 
afterward removed by Charles IX. , in 1565, and by 
Henry III. in 1580. 

They certainly merited this mark of confidence by 
their zeal in preaching and defending the Faith. 

As a prelude to the long series of successful teach- 
ing by the Order, Maldonat, then occupying a pro- 
fessor's chair in the College of Clermont, at Paris, 
attracted thither a brilliant auditory of prelates, no- 
bility, and savants ; the colleges of the Society, hardly 
opened, were filled with pupils. " The Protestants 
themselves," says Ranke, " recalled their sons from 
distant colleges to confide them to the Jesuits." 

Meanwhile, Edmund Auger combated the work- 
ings of the Calvinists in the South. 

At Valencia, he fell into the hands of the Baron of 
Adrets, and from the gallows, even, preached with 
such force and eloquence as to move his- executioners 
to spare his life. 

No sooner is he released, than he hastens to Lyons, 
where a contagious malady was raging, which in a short 
time carried off sixty thousand persons ; here he min- 
isters to the needs of the dying and the poor, restores 
confidence, and saves the city, which with one accord 
follows him to the feet of Mary. In all Lyons, Calvin 
could not then have found a single partisan. 

To this zeal and devotion the heretics could only 



124 The Jesuits. 

oppose violence and calumny, but the)?- were sustained 
by the University of Paris, which had taken alarm at 
such formidable opposition. The conflict was begun. 

The University endeavored to close the schools of 
the Jesuits, as some centuries previous it had done in 
regard to the grand Religious Orders who gave to the 
Church and to science a Thomas Aquinas, Albert 
the Great, and a Duns Scotus. 

And it was necessary that the cause of the Univer- 
sity should be indeed compromised, and this struggle 
against free access to education, most glaringly un- 
reasonable, in order to induce Parliament, to whom 
the affair had been referred, to twice decide, all prej- 
udiced as it was, the case in favor of the Jesuits, as it 
did. 

According to the testimony of even Boullay and 
Cuvier, historians of the University, the low ebb 
which education had reached at this period was greatly 
to be regretted. 

Study within its walls was almost entirely forsaken, 
and what was far more disastrous, the dissolute man- 
ners which prevailed had the effect of disseminating 
among the youth of the schools, shameless ideas and 
impious doctrines. 

The Jesuit Colleges opened gratuitously to all, re- 
established with the taste for literature, zeal for the 
Faith, and practical Christianity ; and from that may 
be said of all these instructors, what Voltaire said of 



France. 125 

Father Paree, that " they had the gift of making his 
pupils love learning and virtue." 

But the League was established. This grand move- 
ment, legitimate of itself, since its sole end was the 
defense of the almost universal religion of France 
against certain factions, brought in its train numerous 
and evil excesses. We can cite from a history at hand, 
the conduct of the Society throughout this delicate 
affair as a model of prudence. 

Its members readily admitted the principle of the 
League, which was only the resistance of national 
Catholicism to Protestant invasion, but they strove at 
the same time to calm the excess of passion and 
reconcile all interests. Far from mingling in the 
struggles of political- parties, they remained from first 
to last the apostles and mediators of peace. In the 
provinces their influence was not so great, for the fifty 
large cities which adhered to the League did ?iot con- 
tain a single house of the Jesuit Order. 

At Paris, one of their members, Father Pigenat, 
modestly played the role of a most disinterested devo- 
tion, which had not even the encouragement of possi- 
ble success. His efforts, as may be supposed, were lost 
sight of in the tempestuous tumult and the fury of the 
" Seize," which he had devoted himself to moderating 
as far as lay in his power, rose to such a height that, 
though he succeeded in calming it more than once, it 
was at the risk of his liberty, and even of his life. 



126 The Jesuits. 

Other members of the Society accepted a more 
hopeful mission, and entered into parley with the 
Sovereign Pontiff for the promotion of peace. 

At the height of excitement in Paris, a few of the 
priests of the Order, carried away by their zeal, began 
to break through the reserve which the spirit of their 
Institute enforced ; but these were speedily recalled by 
the energetic measures of the General of the Society, 
Claude Aquaviva. " State to the King," he writes to 
the Provincial of France, " how strongly our Consti- 
tutions prohibit our mingling in temporal affairs." 

Moreover, he ventured to make to Sixtus V., so 
manifestly partial to the League, the firmest remon- 
strances on the subject of the necessary neutrality of 
the Order. 

The conversion of Henry IV. to Catholicism, how- 
ever, rendered the further existence of the League su- 
perfluous. 

Bellarmine, who was then at Paris, being interrogated 
on the legitimacy of the approaching surrender of the 
Capital to the King, answered (contrary to the advice 
of the University) that " it was legitimate to ground 
arms, and henceforth cease a struggle without an ob- 
ject." 

Meantime, at Rome the Jesuits devoted themselves 
to bringing about a reconciliation between the King of 
France and the Church, and it is a remarkable fact 
that the most active and zealous of these negotiators 



France. 127 

was an Italian, Father Possevin ; a Spaniard, Cardinal 
Solet ; and two Frenchmen, unjustly banished by decree 
of Parliament, Fathers Commolet and Gueret. 

The Bearnais proved himself no ingrate. " My 
cousin," writes Henry IV. to Cardinal Solet, "I know 
that, after God and our Holy Father, I owe to the 
integrity of your conscience the Absolution (that is to 
say, the removal of the ban of excommunication) that 
it has pleased His Holiness to grant me." 

This moderation on the part of the Jesuits, joined to 
their zeal for the preservation of the Faith, was not of a 
nature to disarm the hate which already existed against 
them. Their enemies had been hopeful of a line of 
conduct more favorable to their plans ; disappoint- 
ment was unanimous in Parliament and in the Uni- 
versity. 

By degrees, the confidence testified in their regard 
by the Holy See, the Episcopacy, and the Catholic 
people, joined to the royal favor of which Henry began 
to lavish many proofs, served to arouse the envy of 
their numerous enemies. The same fanatics whose 
hands had armed Pojtrot, the murderer of the Duke of 
Guise, and Clement, the assassin of Henry III., en- 
deavored to involve the Jesuits in the sentence of 
Chastel. 

It was' no easy task to prove them guilty, supported, 
as they were, by public esteem, and possessing the 
avowed sympathy of the king. But public estimation 



128 The Jesuits. 

is wavering, and the king was otherwise much en- 
grossed. Besides, the times afford examples of parlia- 
mentary intrigue which confound reason itself. 

John Chastel had followed the course of the Uni- 
versity for ten years ; he was, in fact, studying law 
there, under Marcellius, at the time when he attempted 
the life of Henry IV. But he had formerly attended 
the College of Clermont, for some months, in the 
quality of external pupil. This paltry detail was made 
the pretext for instituting an examination ; but how to 
follow it up ? Ah ! Parliament was equal to the occa- 
sion. It sought diligently for some other trifle on which 
to build ; but finding nothing, and not being, in truth, 
exacting in this regard, it contented itself with these 
months of the criminal's attendance as external pupil 
at the Jesuits' College. " The Huguenots and Free- 
thinkers/' says the historian Dupleix, "launch a thou- 
sand execrations, curses, and imprecations against the 
Jesuits, but neither proof nor presumption could be 
extorted from the assassin by the violence of the 
torture." 

The " Etoile," the enemy of th« Jesuits, Sulby like- 
wise, de Thou, Mathieu, Cayet, the " Memoirs of the 
League," all chroniclers, are unanimous in admitting 
that " Chastel exonerated the Jesuits, and maintained 
with his last breath that they had been unjustly sus- 
pected." 

But to what purpose 1 There was the fact of his 



France. 129 

attendance at the college. During those months the 
Jesuits had taught him, besides the art of assassination, 
the art of remaining silent. Moreover, why so much 
ceremony about the affair ? " If not thee, then it is 
thy brother." 

It was imperative that the Jesuits be proved guilty, 
and the Parliament of Paris, for the first time, covered 
itself with dishonor, and created a precedent for the 
stupendous infamy of the eighteenth century. 

Parliament, against all appearances, and in defiance 
even of good sense, condemned them. This great 
body, heretofore so worthy in many respects, but now 
swayed by the dictates of blinded passion, did not 
hesitate at that most odious of crimes, judicial assas- 
sination. 

A harmless old man who, perhaps, had never seen 
Chastel — Father Guignard — lived a most retired life 
in the library of the college. He was arrested, con- 
demned, and hanged in the Place de Greve, guilty of 
the sole crime " de etre venue a mauvaise heure" says 
the "Etoile." 

Why the summary judgment and cruel sentence? 
Because, replies the Chancellor of France, Hurault de 
Chiverny, in his State Memoirs, "the enemies of the 
Jesuits found, or perhaps pretended to find, in the 
chamber of Guignard, certain writings hostile to the 
J*>te king, Henry 111." 

" Now, the Judges who condemned him," adds the 
9 



130 The Jesuits. 

" Etoile," " were for the most part those who had co- 
incided in the judgment of arrest given against the late 
king in 1589 (five years previous), which is a most 
remarkable fact." 

Remarkable in truth, and even impossible, if it were 
not a question of the condemnation of a Jesuit. 

We have preferred to cite, in this instance, the wri- 
ters and chronicles hostile to the Jesuits, and this for a 
very natural reason; there is not an honest writer's 
pen which has allowed to pass, without execration, this 
act of repulsive iniquity. But the works of " modern 
liberalism " afford a curious study of the same facts. I 
have under my eyes a so-called popular work, one which 
in certain circles has gained great notoriety, "The 
History of Paris," by Dulaure, and I am bound down 
with admiration. He is not wicked at heart, good 'Uncle 
Dulaure is not ; he would have been better pleased 
if they had not hanged Father Guignard, and especially 
if they had not burnt his body and scattered the ashes 
to the winds, which appears to him an excess. He 
slightly bemoans this circumstance, even while insult- 
ing the victim through force of habit, and gently cen- 
sures Parliament. 

But he detests the Jesuits so cordially and frankly. 
In view of the chaplet of naive calumnies which he 
weaves against the Jesuits apropos of the hideous mur- 
der of a Jesuit, it is plainly seen that his principal 
grudge against Parliament has its origin in the regret 



France. 1 3 1 

which he experiences at beholding so many of the 
Jesuits alive. 

The paragraph in the decree which condemns all 
Jesuits as " corrupters of youth and disturbers of the 
public peace, to depart within three days' time from 
Paris," elicits from him chuckles of satisfaction, and 
he devotes, I know not how many 8vo pages to the 
description of the grotesque pillar, " the monument 
raised to the shame of the Jesuits," but which would 
more likely have perpetuated the eternal ignominy of 
Parliament if Henry IV., through charity for his friends, 
both speakers and judges, had not demolished and 
swept it away. 

While censuring slightly the judicial assassins of 
Father Guignard, who, after all, was but one Jesuit, the 
worthy Dulaure applauds the exile of five hundred 
Jesuits, "who, perhaps, had not yet attempted the life 
of Henry IV., but who would eventually poignard him 
as they had Henry III." 

For Ravillac shall be a Jesuit, as Jacques Clement 
was a Jesuit, and all the assassins of kings, from Brutus 
to Damiens, have been Jesuits. 

And this it is which forms the essence of the dull, 
weary refrain set to the false air of a sorry composition 
of Beranger's. 

But in the time of good Uncle Dulaure, people 
were only liberal and enlightened ; the lyric of the 
gutter was not in vogue. Each took his meal of 



132 The Jesuits. 

Jesuit quietly, like a well-brought-up burgher, and 
when he had finished Father Guignard, remarked with 
fine irony of the unbelievers of Yvetot : * "If Henry 
IV. had not cajoled the Jesuits, there stood ready ten 
thousand of them enumerated, who would have poign- 
arded him, each in turn. It is a well-known fact." 

Ah ! Hail to the light ! And believe me when I 
declare, that I have not the faintest pretension to hin- 
der men equally " enlightened " from taking the " Al- 
manachs" of good Uncle Dulaure. 

Dulaure's account was correct ; not content with 
having shed the blood of an innocent priest, the Par- 
liament expelled the Jesuits from Paris, "not without 
much astonishment and the regret of many ! These 
upright magistrates then loyally appropriated the goods 
of the banished." t The fine and ample library of the 
Order was exposed to pillage. The books were 
judged fairly confiscated by the gentlemen of the 
king's council, who first accommodated themselves 
according to their conclusions. J 

"This outrage of justice committed by those who 
were its representatives was not only," says Protestant 
Sismondi, " an iniquitous scandal ; it was an act of 
extraordinarily political baseness." 



* A small French town whose inhabitants are famed for 
their stupidity. , 

f Chivering, " Memoirs of State," p. 241. 
% L'Etoile. 



France. 133 

It will be difficult to make mankind believe, even 
by employing the eloquence of such historians as Du- 
laure, that Henry IV. was a coward ; but it is univer- 
sally admitted that he had a soul too lofty to stoop to 
connivance at such infamy.* 

He was not slow in making reparation, as far as lay 
in his power, for this bloody injustice, and notwith- 
standing all the opposition of Parliament, recalled the 
Jesuits with tclat. 

In the month of September, 1603, the king signed 
at Rouen a Decree w T hich legally re-established the 
Order within the jurisdiction of several Parliaments ; 
and as the members of that of Paris, with the Presi- 
dent, Achille de Harlay, at the head, thought good 
to present to the king their " most humble remon- 
strances" on this subject, the king replied in those 
green and living words which certainly breathe no 
spirit of poltroonery, "I am very thankful to you for 
the care that you have of my person and of my 
kingdom ; I have all your conceptions in mine, but 
you have not all mine in yours. You believe your- 
selves most skillful in the managing of State affairs, 



* In 1762 they invented, in the exigencies of the cause, an 
Edict of Henry IV., of the 7th of January, .1595, which was 
recently quoted to the Chamber of Deputies and the Court. 
Proofs exist in abundance which show tfciat this pretended 
Decree never existed. (See, among others, Documents con- 
cerning the Society of Jesus, 1827, Volume 1st.) 



134 The Jesuits. 

but very often you know no more of them than do I 
of the chicanery of the law. I would, then, that you 
should know (relative to Colloquy of Poissy), that if 
all these had done as well as one or two Jesuits who 
chanced to be present, very fortunately, things would 
have gone better for the Catholics. Since that time 
we recognize, not their ambition, but their capacity, 
and I am astonished on what grounds you found your 
opinion of the ambition of persons who refuse dignities 
and prelacies when offered them; who make a vow to 
God never to accept them, and who pretend to noth- 
ing in this world only to serve, without recompense, 
all those who will accept their service. If the word 
Jesuit displeases you, who do you hot find fault with ? 
those who call themselves Religious of the Trinity. 
.... For my part, I would love rather to be called 
Jesuit than Jacobin or Augustin. If they have only 
been tolerated in France up to this time, God has re- 
served for me the glory, which I hold as a great grace, 
to establish them there ; if their existence there has 
only been provisionary, it shall henceforth be by edict 
and decree ; the will of my predecessors retained them 
there ; my will shall establish them there. 

"The University has openly opposed them, for the 
reason that they are more successful in teaching, as is 
shown by the number of scholars in their colleges, or 
because they were not incorporated with the Uni- 
versity. 



France. 135 

" You say that in your Parliament the most learned 
have not studied with them ; if the oldest be the most 
learned, this is true, for they must have studied before 
the Jesuits were known in France ; but I am certain 
that all the other Parliaments do not speak thus, nor 
even all of your own ; and, if they learn not better in 
their colleges than elsewhere, whence comes it that 
through their reputation your University is deserted 
by those who, notwithstanding all your decrees, seek 
them at Douay, at Pont (at Mousson), and beyond 
the kingdom ? 

" To term the Society factious, because it took part 
with the League, has been the insult of the times. 
They believed themselves right when they were mis- 
taken, like several others ;* but I believe that they 
lose less malice than the others, and hold that the 
same conscientiousness, joined to the favors I have 
done them, binds them as affectionately, and even 
more so, to me than to the League. 

" They attract, you say, the youths who possess good 
parts, and choose the best among them ; for this I 
esteem them. Do not we make choice of the best 
soldiers for the war? And if interest were unknown 
among you, would you receive any who was not worthy 
of your company, or to serve in your Parliament ? If 



* One can hardly expect Henry IV. to approve of the 
League. 



136 The Jesuits. 

they furnish you with ignorant preceptors or preachers, 
you will despise them ; they are possessed of fine 
minds, and you find fault at them. As for the wealth 
which you. say they possess, it is a calumny ; in all 
France they have not more than twelve or fifteen 
thousand crowns revenue altogether. The vow which 
they make to the Pope is not binding in all things. 

" They are bound to obey the Popes only when the 
Pontiffs wish to employ them to convert the infidels, 
and, in fact, it is through them that God has converted 
the Indies. You say that they enter as they best can, 
so also do others and myself enter into my kingdom as 
best I could ; but it must be acknowledged that their 
patience is grand, and commands my admiration, for 
with patience and holy living they accomplish all 
things. And I esteem none the less for being, as you 
say, great observers of their Institute ; this is what 
sustains them. Touching their opinions of the Pope, 
I know that they respect him highly, as I also do. As 
for the doctrine of emancipating the ecclesiastics from 
my authority, and teaching the murder of kings, it is 
necessary to see on their side what they say, and in- 
form ourselves if it is true that they teach their youth. 
One circumstance makes me believe that this is not 
true. During the thirty years that they have taught 
the youth of France, one hundred thousand scholars 
of all conditions have come from colleges, having 
lived among them as of them, and there can not be 



France. 137 

found a single one of this great number to affirm hav- 
ing heard such language, nor anything akin to it, to give 
rise to these reproaches. 

" As to Barriere, so far from a Jesuit having con- 
fessed him, as you affirm, I was warned by a Jesuit of 
his intention, and another told him he would be damn- 
ed if he dared to undertake it 

" And as for Chastel, the torture could not wring from 
him any accusation against Varade, or any Jesuit what- 
ever ; if otherwise, why did your spare them ? For the 
one who was executed was found guilty on another 
charge, that which was said to be found in his writings. 
But even if one Jesuit has directed the blow, must all 
the apostles surfer for the crime of Judas, or myself be- 
come answerable for all the thefts and crimes which 
shall be done in the future by those who shall be my 
soldiers ? 

" If a Spanish Jesuit and Cardinal, Father Tolet, as- 
sists me to obtain the benediction of the Holy Father 
when I become a Catholic, why should you disparage 
the French, my natural subjects ? I would know 
those whom I would judge, and I would impart to 
them what I wish ; leave me the management and di- 
rection of this Society ; I have managed and governed 
more difficult things, and less easy to conduct : obey 
only my will." 

We have produced at length these words of a king 
so often assassinated by the Jesuits, not only in defense 



138 The Jesuits. 

of the Jesuits who have been long since absolved of 
the charges in question, but also in homage to an au- 
gust writer who, at the distance of half a century from 
Bossuet, Pascal, or Labujere, expresses himself in 
such pure, clear, vigorous French. 

Never has the mask been plucked from the face of 
calumny with a more forcible gesture. The speech 
reveals at once a lofty style and a grand heart. 

It commanded obedience, and the Edict of Rouen, 
notwithstanding the manifestations of ill-will, was reg- 
istered in Parliament on the fourth of January, 1604. 

Henry did not pause here. In a thousand ways he 
testified his esteem, his gratitude, and his affection for 
the members of the Society. And it would be difficult 
indeed to reconcile with the idea of his alleged dread 
of them, the favor which 'he carried to the extent of 
establishing them in his own " Maison de la Fleche," 
of giving his utmost confidence to the famous and 
learned Father Coton, and finally, which passes the 
limits of all probability in regard to cowardice, of be- 
queathing to them by will his heart, as a last proof of 
that tender regard which drew from him the avowal: 
" I have loved you since I have known you." 

Louis XIII., following in the path of his father, took 
the entire Order " under his protection and safeguard, 
as the late king had been pleased to do ; " he confirmed 
the right of teaching which had been granted them by 



France. 1 39 

Henry IV., and recommended them to the Protestant 
Princes of Germany " as men of lofty, great piety, and 
immense prudence." In 1627 he came with Riche- 
lieu to lay the corner-stone of their church in the Fau- 
bourg St. Antoine ;* in .short, the royal protection and 
public favor defended them so effectually against the 
pitiful jealousies and hatred of their opponents, that 
during this single year the number of their pupils in 
the province of Paris alone amounted to thirteen 
thousand one hundred and ninety-five. 

What think you of times of darkness, in which the 
desire of knowledge was so universally spread ? 

And what think you of these ignorant, these " ob- 
scurers " taking the first rank in all branches of science, 
and vanquishing the leaders of the Reformation at ev- 
ery passage at arms, whether religious, moral, or philo- 
sophical ? Whose radiance will dim the light of a 
Bellarmin or a Tolet ? Does this epoch furnish an 
o ator of more winning eloquence than Canesius ? 
Any sounder theologian than Molina, so much and so 
vilely misrepresented ? Molina maintained the liberty 
of man under the infinite power of the Almighty. 

Such a generous belief as this sufficed to rouse 
against his doctrine those who would fain teach God, 



* Founded, according to the promise of St. Ignatius, in the 
same spot where was made by the Protestants, the first sac- 
rilegious attempt against the Images of the Blessed Virgin. 



140 The Jesuits. 

as well as those false rigorists who weight at will the 
yoke of God, until they render it insupportable. Judas 
has diverse fashions of betraying his Master. 

Can a grander doctrine be cited than that of Suarez, 
of whom Bossuet said, " That in him is contained the 
entire school " ? 

I have no intention of here narrating the services 
rendered to intelligence by the Institute of the Jesuits ; 
such a proceeding would take too much space ; but I 
can not pass over in silence the gigantic work of 
the Benedictine, Jean Bolland, the " Acta Sanc- 
torum," so popular in science under the name of 
" The Bollandists," and which Leibnitz termed a Chris- 
tian Encyclopedia. Labbe and Sirmond flourished at 
that period, and Petau was the oracle of learned Europe. 

Aquarira governed the Order. Later, D'Alembert 
passed a panegyric on this General, which makes one 
imagine that he ranks him above Ignatius himself. 
The Society possessed five hundred and fifty houses, 
and had branches in thirty-three provinces, possessing 
upward of twelve thousand Religious. 

Owing to the researches of Father d' Eckel, a great 
advance was made in Numismatics; they composed 
grammars and lexicons, of nearly one hundred lan- 
guages and idioms ; among which may be enumerated 
the Basque and the Low-Breton, the Hungarian and 
the Turkish, the Persian, the Japanese, and the Chi- 
nese, and the greater part of the savage idioms. 



France. 141 

Father Lanzi discovered the Etruscan language ; 
two other Jesuits, Ernest Hanxleden and Jean Pons, 
revealed to the learned world the mysteries of Sans- 
krit and of Telenga. Father Bouvet brought into 
France the forty-nine volumes in the Chinese tongue, 
which were the origin of the present collection of the 
National Library. Finally, that universal genius, Kir- 
cher, had furthered more than our Champollion the 
study of Egyptian hieroglyphics. 

As for the Jesuit astronomers, mathematicians', min- 
eralogists, naturalists, geographers, inventors, they are 
simply innumerable. 

On this subject, the " History of Mathematics," by 
Montuela, the "Astronomical Bibliography" of La- 
lande, and the " History of the Society of Jesus," by 
Cretineau-Joly, may be consulted. I will merely cite 
for the curiqsity of inventors, victims of "Sic vos 
non vobis" the instance of Father Lana-Terzi, born 
in 1 63 1, who discovered Aerostation, and another 
Jesuit, a Portuguese missionary to Brazil, Barthelemy 
de Gusmao, who a century later made the first public 
experiment of what is called a Montgolfier, long be- 
fore Montgolfier. The same Lana invented the drill- 
plow, of which Sail in 1733 proclaimed himself the in- 
ventor. 

Not only are we indebted to the Jesuits for that 
proud flower, the Camelias, and the celebrated drug 
known as the Peruvian Bark, but also for the gem of 



142 The Jesuits. 

our gardens, the spreading horse-chestnut. But in the 
contemplation of these smaller things, we must not 
lose sight of their great services. 

When royal absolutism attempted to establish itself 
as a dogma in France, and especially in England, the 
Jesuits, with Bellarmine and Suarez at their head, de- 
fended the right of the people, again demonstrating 
to the world that the grand law of obedience, insti- 
tuted by Ignatius, was far from excluding the idea of 
freedem. Certain it is that Pascal, to whom we have at 
length come, never turned his weapons on such men 
as these ; he omitted to touch, though ever so lightly, 
upon Suarez, Canesius, Possevin, Petau, Solet, or Bellar- 
mine \ nor, truth to tell, on any one ; for the perpetual 
fool, the idiotic and distorted manikin of a Jesuit 
which he fabricates, to scoff at and deride at his pleas- 
ure, is Nobody. 

If, for instance, when bringing before the world the 
case of the Jesuits of the seventeenth century, the 
name of Bourdaloue, immortal honor of the French 
pulpit, should be carefully eschewed, it would not dim 
in the least the radiance of that of Francis Regis, the 
radiant apostle of charity. 

They may be numbered by the hundredfold, these 
great Jesuits ; history is replete with their names. 
Did Pascal not know of them ? Or did he despise 
them ? 

Had Pascal, who won so easily his amusing tri- 



France. 143 

umphs, by furnishing those inventions of insult, spiced 
even to indecency, and attaching to them the humble 
names of some obscure Religious, never heard those 
names which had resounded throughout Europe ? 

There are none so deaf as he who will not hear ; 
and he who employs his own hands to bandage his 
eyes is blind to all save a faint glimmer. 

There is a legend of the time of Francis Regis 
which relates that, entering on a certain Sunday 
an inn, where some gay revelers had chosen the 'hour 
of high mass for their debauch, he attempted to preach 
to them. 

They laughed at him; a proceeding which the 
austere Pascal would not have approved, still less the 
brutal act of one of the young men, who gave the saint 
a blow. 

But what of the blows of the " Provinciales," who 
have not even the wine of the inn to plead in excuse ? 

Regis said to him who struck him : " I thank you, 
my brother ; I have merited worse treatment ;- but 
consider your soul." 

Note well ! Themistocles had acted almost similarly ; 
&nd it is his glory ; but this constitutes the difference : 
Themistocles was a practical hero, whilst the saint's 
action affords only a pretext for abuse. 

What happens ? The unhappy young men, although 
intoxicated, threw themselves at the saint's feet and 
begged pardon. 



144 The Jesuits. 

Behold the first step toward a good life ! Jesuits ! 
Troublesome ones to deal with ! In the position of 
Francis Regis, a hearty, honest fellow would have re- 
turned the blow, crying quits, and without rancor. 
Such is the nature of Yvetot. The God of these 
worthy people exacts no more. Well, a little indul- 
gence ! 

As for me, I willingly incline toward the side of in- 
dulgence, and singular to relate, so do the Jesuits; 
but it is Pascal who will not. Ah, Pascal was no 
hearty, honest opponent ; no more than were the 
Arnauldsj his patrons, sincere comrades of such. 

Indulgence ! The Jansenists ! Why, the very words 
shriek their protest against being used together ! Sooner 
would the Jansenists enlarge hell ! Assuredly, no 
one can accuse them of offering the other cheek for a 
blow ; they would resent the assault with the club, and 
their indignation against the Jesuits took root in the 
indulgence of the Jesuits. 

Francis Regis, that angel of purity, was, to them, a 
being of " lax morals " and " weak devotion," he who 
fell dead under his cross ! 

God defend me from denouncing, or even judg- 
ing, the conscience of Pascal, of whose writings cer- 
tain pages learnt by heart in my youthful days are 
still embalmed in memory. He had the great style of 
a great mind, and than many passages of his I know 
nothing more beautiful. 



France. 145 

In the " Provinciales " even, so unworthy of his 
genius, there are admirable things, but what poison 
mingles with the success ! and to what depths can the 
vainglory of success debase a proud soul ! 

The first intoxication of Pascal was induced by 
the astonishment of the Arnaulds, who were amazed 
at nothing; and by their admiration of him, they who 
admired nobody, seeming unimpressible. 

The Arnaulds had essayed a pamphlet ; they were 
celebrated for the unvarying dullness which was dis- 
tilled from their pens. 

This particular one had been the work of several 
Arnaulds, and they had finally brought forth some- 
thing so awfully dull, as to terrify themselves and 
Pascal also. 

Pascal carried the manuscript to his study ; he 
corrected it, or rather wrote something new. 

The Arnaulds asked to see it ; Pascal read, and 
the Arnaulds, brought face to face with whatever he 
had retained of their ideas, so brilliantly and trench- 
antly expressed, henceforth publicly bowed down be- 
fore him. 

The astonishment of the Arnaulds at finding the 
solitary Pascal more efficient than the combined Ar- 
naulds, was loudly expressed. 

And nothing is so flattering as the tribute of aston- 
ishment, extorted from the innocent pride of one's 
masters. 

10 



146 The Jesuits. 

Pascal had accepted the Arnaulds as his masters, 
and I deem it only fair to state here that all the Ar- 
naulds were not called by that name. 

Their name was legion ; they were a convent of 
close-cropped Calvinistic fathers ; they were a clan, a 
camp ; they were Port-Royal. 

Pascal was caught at once by this astonishment, 
which became a veritable family ovation. 

The " Provinciales " sprang into existence ; the 
votaries of Protestantism, convoked by Jansenius, to 
empoison Faith by disturbing its dogmas ; morality, in 
denying free-will to man ; and the practice of religion, 
by substituting in place of charity a pharisaical rigor, 
had gained its apostle, greater far than it had dared to 
hope for ! 

It must be acknowledged that in all things aston- 
ishment is the half of success. The success of the 
"Provinciales" was enormous, because it amazed the 
public more than the Arnauld faction had done. Did 
it satisfy Pascal ? 

Did he who had allowed to ascend from his heart 
those transports of ardent love, find in the same heart 
an equal treasure of wicked and sluggish hate ? It is 
a curious question. 

And Pascal, the great Pascal, the gloomy, to sud- 
denly become facetious and amusing ! 

The grave Pascal cutting capers in the dress of a 
pamphleteer ! Ah ! it was rich ; and, as was just, 



France. 147 

won for him more applause from his enemies than 
from his friends. 

Did he need that, however ? And would not some 
meaner or greater among the Arnaulds have sufficed 
to serve up Aristides to the appetites of the Athenians ? 

I have said that Jansenism was only Calvinism 
disguised ; I add, badly disguised ; the same error was 
there with increased falsehood. The Abbe of Saint- 
Cyran said indignantly to Saint Vincent de Paul, in 
speaking of Calvin, u Bene sensif, male locutus est .• " 
" He thought well ; he spoke badly." 

The Arnauld party, who had assumed the role of 
traducing Calvin in a pseudo-orthodox language, had 
long been Calvinistic, and remained at heart Calvin- 
istic ; Port-Royal, while disguising its own colors, 
accused the Jesuits of hypocrisy. Such is the per- 
petual tactic of falsehood. 

This explains the struggle entered into by the So- 
ciety of Jesus and the new sect. The Jesuits com- 
bated with energy ; it was a question of vital interest, 
both for the Church and for France. Menaced with 
the anathema of the Holy -See, distrusted by those in 
power, yet openly embraced or secretly favored by 
many members of the Parliament and University, the 
Jansenist heresy, powerless to defend its own too glar- 
ing faults, found means, thanks to the pen of Pascal, 
to attribute imaginary ones to the Jesuits. The " Pro- 
vinciates" was a mere diversion, rendered potent by 



148 The Jesuits. 

the personality of its author. Why did not the Jesuits 
respond in the same tone ? In the first place, they 
had no Pascal. But even had they possessed a Pascal, 
they would have blunted the too sharp edge of his pen. 

I smile at the thought of all the smiles which will 
greet my assertion. Not only would the Jesuits have 
refused to furnish their Pascal with the abundance of 
false or mutilated texts which adorn the " Provin- 
ciales," but also would have said to him, " Pardon," 
like St. Francis Regis, " remember the words of Loy- 
ola, ' strike not ! ' " The advocate of the Society of 
Jesus is prevented from striking, for it bears the name 
of Him who said to his apostles: " Odio erites omni- 
bus propter nomen meumT * 

" We are the sons of Jesus, and as far as man can 
accomplish so grand a duty, we will pay in love all the 
outrages of hate." 

Louis IV.! Great monarch; still greater person- 
age, who filled a mighty age ! 

Each of the elements which composed this glory is 
in itself grand, and sufficient to illuminate an age ; 
with those blocks, precious in the material, gigantic in 
the mass, a Pantheon was constructed, of regular and 
square proportions, in exact correspondence to those 
of the monarch, illuminated by the light of the mon- 



* « 



You shall be hated because of my name." 



France. 149 

arch, made for the monarch, by the monarch, like unto 
the monarch ; of a kind which makes one ask, at view 
of the monument, most imposing in its symmetry, but 
drawn in such rigorous lines, though tame, as to fatigue 
the eye, how the royal architect contrived to smooth 
away so many grand projections ? 

With nothing, at the moment when death surprised 
him, Henry the Great had reared a mountain ; with 
mountains, Louis the Great constructed a fair and reg- 
ular colonnade on level earth. He found that high 
enough, and, alas ! mounted no higher. 

From the ashes of Henry IV. arose a power which 
bore the name of Richelieu. On the scarcely closed 
sepulchre of Louis XIV., his testament was destroyed. 

Bossuet, Corneille, Bourdaloue, Racine, Conde, and 
Turenne, gave place to the atheistical " meetings " of 
Phillipe de Orleans, the a sweet heart," and amiable 
character of his admirers, who renders between two 
" peiis-soupers" the first oracles of the religion of 
Voltaire. 

I will say little of the reign of Louis XIV. Perhaps 
I do not appreciate, at its just value, the grand role 
which the Jesuits played therein. My opinion is faulty, 
no doubt, when I assert that here is not the glory which 
I love. 

I merely say of this reign, that it was not reserved for 
our times to invent violent opposition to the Holy See. 
Do not doubt for a moment, that at the time of which 



150 The Jesuits. 

I write, the germ of the Revolution was already in the 
bosom of absolutism. He who is accused of having 
one day said, 6< I am the State ! " if he said it on the 
day when he uttered it, invoked the thunderbolt. 

The Jesuits had the perilous honor of furnishing a 
confessor to Louis XIV.; it must have been but a 
thankless office. One can picture only embarrassment 
of the guardians- of this conscience, at once so vast and 
so narrow, which thought to ennoble sin by clothing it 
in the robes of etiquette, and dignify scandal by lend- 
ing it the allurements of majesty. 

It is true that the monarch showed a really great 
spirit in misfortune, and it was then that the influence 
of these, holy men made itself felt. 

He justly stands out glorious in history for having 
possessed, by the bounty of Providence, a soul suffi- 
cient to inspire a throng of geniuses ; but I am one of 
those who can not pardon his having ceremoniously, 
solemnly, almost religiously, steeped in the solvent of 
illegitimacy the robust word of the legitimate throne, 
making it decay, piece by piece, until less than a cen- 
tury after it should fall under the chaste holiness of 
Louis XVI. 

Still less will I linger at the Regency, the immediate 
chastisement of the faults of Louis XIV. 

As for Louis XV., whose death was as ignoble as 
the lives of his ancestors had been glorious, we must 
pause, perforce, at his reign, which witnesses the 



France. 151 

league of kings, ministers, parliaments, courtesans, 
and philosophers, definitely inaugurate the siege 
against the Society of Jesus, the advance work of the 
fortifications of the Church, and carry it in the fury of 
a general assault. 

This war, one may say, originated with the birth of 
the Order. 

All revolt, sensualism, doubt, incredulity, heresy 
especially, patent or disguised, held in abhorrence 
these unparalleled defenders of orthodox truth, obedi- 
ence and pure spirituality. 

They marred the play of the gloomy comedians of 
parliamentarianism even more effectually than they 
opposed the effort of the open rebels of the pretended 
philosophy, and, unquestionably, the hate of the 
avowed Protestants against them was far less enven- 
omed than the sullen rage smoldering in the hypo- 
critical hearts of the perpetually masked offspring of 
Jansenius ; those even whom Moliere has held up to 
view in lt Tartufe." 

Now, these false apostles, whose crime and whose 
misfortune was, to set at defiance, like Judas, the 
Infinite Good, and to cry out scandal, when they 
saw the entire vase of precious ointment poured over the 
feet of Jesus, stood thick about the throne. Through- 
out the oratories of the Court, of Parliament, and even 
among the clergy — for Cardinal de Noailles had his 
numerous adherents — might be found the crucifixes 



152 The Jesuits. 

bearing our Lord represented with upraised instead of 
extended arms, thus giving semblance to the blasphe- 
mous calumny attributed to Saint Augustine, by the 
Abbe of Saint Cyran, namely, that " Jesus did not 
die for all, but for a small number." 

Jesus ! Love ! immense, absolute charity ! narrow- 
ing His benevolence, and limiting His mercy ! 

The Son of the Almighty God, Father of Truth, of 
unalloyed justice, making a choice and diminishing 
the divine breadth of His embrace, to clasp within it the 
least worthy hearts ! Madness of Bourgeois pride ! 
Insanity of Oligarchical pretensions ! 

For it is impossible to avoid the cursory remark that 
the most determined party, in point of aristocracy, is 
precisely that which engenders every revolution, the 
party of the "Arnaulds " ;* the terrible brood of " doc- 
trinaires " and the men of the "juste milieu" enemy 
to all above it, and to all beneath it; demolishing with 
one hand, oppressing with the other, and periodically 
losing its self-control, so far as to give free rein to the 
evil passions of the lower against the upper classes ; a 
nice speculation by which it has existed during the 
last century and a half, but of which the country is 
dying. 

The so-called authority of the court lowered its 
standard, and gradually fell into contempt. 



* Leaders of the Jansenist party in France. 



France. 153 

The Regency had given to the world a fantastic 
poem on the faults of Louis XIV., couched in most 
obscene language. From that tainted spot, the Palais- 
Royal, fountain-head of the sparkling wit, from whence 
escaped ever an echo of the atheistical refrain, a 
wind of contagion swept over Europe, and the child- 
hood of Louis XV. had been passed in this pestilential 
atmosphere. France took the lead in this course of 
royal debasement, and all the other courts followed 
their leader, marching and stumbling in the same rut. 

One single sovereign remained an exception — Maria 
Theresa ; as her interests were not those of France, 
she could regard with contented eye the descendant of 
the great enemy of the House of Austria, the heir of 
Henry IV., swept along by the current, a waif on 
the gulf where menaced unknown dangers. 

When the Due de Choiseul assumed the direction 
of State affairs, it was said, for the first time since the 
foundation of our Monarchy, that a French Minister 
received the pension of the stranger, and those who 
said it, added, that the pension was paid by Austria. 
However, Prussia paid some substantial pensions too, 
and the proverb, " to work for the King of Prussia," 
had its birth in these times when the Duke, a Peer 
and Marshal of France, built himself a dwelling with 
money which caused the house to retain the name of 
the " Pavilion of Hanover." 

But that the level of patriotic pride could still fall 



154 The Jesuits. 

lower, was proven, when in our midst, at Paris, a man, 
an illustrious writer, the idol of the people, addressed 
publicly, in time of war, flatteries to the Prussian, and 
lost nothing of his popularity ; but the contrary. 

It was the fashion among the poets to draw our 
Generals on the hurdle, while twining, though not gratis 
to be sure, garlands for the victor of Rosbach. And 
were these poets Jesuits ? Even Rome herself felt 
for a time the pall which lowered, over the world at 
this period. And what wonder ! Throughout the 
ages a prophetic spirit has hovered about the Chair of 
Saint Peter, and the presentiment of that convulsion 
which was to agitate the world, certainly afflicted in 
advance the saddened hearts of the Sovereign Pontiffs. 
With the clear eye of faith they saw that which had 
been the pride of the great European family especially 
tottering to its fall, and the prostrate Church sorrow- 
fully regarded the flood of ignominy which rose high 
about the thrones before overwhelming them. 

One day Madame de Pompadour, that female Me- 
ceanas of the philosophy which threw men into the 
Bastile for a witticism, and left them there ruthlessly to 
scratch its stones with their nails, until her death, and 
even after it ; she who aided M. de Choiseul to betray 
Montcalm in Canada, and to persecute Dupleix in 
India, previous to killing La Bourdonnais by grief, 
and Lally-Tolendal by the axe; but a most chairaing 



France. 155 

woman, except for these little instances, otherwise, 
who protected the Free-thinkers, and permitted some 
madrigals on the part of Voltaire, in moments of good 
humor — one day conceived the startling idea of her 
receiving the Blessed Sacrament at Easter. 

Why ? None can answer with certainty. Some 
pretend that this fancy originated with the king, 
who still retained at the depths of his sad life a leaven 
of " superstition." 

Certain it is, however, that Madame de Pompa- 
dour, pardoning God, resolved to receive him once 
more, but without ceremony, in nonchalant fashion. 
As for purifying her conscience (on this subject, M. de 
Richelieu having in mind, no doubt, the Augean 
stables, asks, " But, how ? Hercules is dead,") there 
was no question ; no other way of doing it save that 
of abandoning her charge, who was worth in emolu- 
ments the trade of M. de Choiseul. 

She informed herself of the ways and means to be 
taken in order to arrive at the conclusion of " the af- 
fair," which, according to her, would redound to the 
advantage of religion. Women of this sort are ever 
surrounded by the most vile category of flatterers, 
each one of whom affirms that the obsequiousness is on 
her side, since she can do without God, and that God 
will only be too happy to enter into the good graces of 
a person of such importance. " The priests," say they, 
" exact so-and-so from a new-comer ; but they under- 



156 The Jesuits. 

stand very well that Madame de Pompadour, the cousin 
of Maria Theresa of Austria, and the patron of M. 
de Choiseul, can not be treated as a simple princess 
of the blood. State your conditions — they are ac- 
cepted in advance." 

And note how much nearer to the grand and mer- 
ciful truth was the unbridled flattery of these cour- 
tiers than even she supposed. The crucifix widely 
extends its arms. If Antoinette, wife of Detiolles, 
Marquise de Pompadour, Princess de Neufchatel, a 
creature, shameful even amongst the most shameless 
of this ignoble epoch, had discovered only one atom 
of repentance within her heart, the arms of this im- 
mense Love would have closed to gather it to Itself, 
and cherish her repentance. And thus, as certainly as 
gospel, would have been verified the burlesque affir- 
mations of the court-parrots : " God was happy, only 
too happy," to re-enter into the good graces of this 
sinner. 

And there was no priest in the world to exact of 
her, living poison and crying scandal as she was, any 
more than would have been required of any humble 
woman of the wayside. The path of Mary Magdalen 
lay before her. 

But no heart was in the body of this courtesan, 
aging in years, and already a veteran in infamy. Mary 
Magdalen had loved much ; Madame de Pompadour 
had haggled much, hated much, and defiled much. 



France. 157 

• 

She was of the Jewish race, and it was a bargain which 
she proposed to Heaven. 

She knew this so well that she hesitated. They say, 
that at this juncture M. le Due de Choiseul, the states- 
man-philosopher, who ruined our colonies, who fam- 
ished our soldiers in campaign, and reduced our prov- 
inces to despair, by paying the monstrous " appropri- 
ations" of the " favorite " ; this the man, worthy of 
a profound pity, as the apparent cause of all the dis- 
asters of France ; he who had the supreme misfortune, 
as the minister of kings, to be praised by the assassins 
of kings, desired to implant the seed of an undying 
hatred in the base mind of this fallen woman. He 
had need of it. 

He pronounced in the ear of Madame de Pom- 
padour the word : " Society of Jesus." The famous 
commonplace of the Jansenist calumny — the "lax 
morality" of the Jesuits — was naturally discussed. 
Those whom Pascal had accused of "weak devotion," 
would smooth all difficulties, and arrange everything 
in the furtherance of their own interests. The fact is, 
that Madame de Pompadour addressed herself to the 
Jesuits to demand their complicity in a sacrilegious 
rite. 

Many still affirm that the Jesuits repulsed her over- 
ture with violent indignation. They are mistaken ; 
the indignation of the Fathers was mute, because their 
conscience was clear. 



158 The Jesuits. 

% 
It appears from all documents, that Madame de 

Pompadour was received with the commiseration due 

to her ignorance and to her moral misery. The same 

was said to her that is said to all who seek the tribunal 

of penance. 

If she persisted and carried into effect a sacrilegious 
negotiation, as seems to be proven by the insensate 
appeal which she carried even to the feet of the Holy 
Father, it is proved equally by this appeal that she 
was put off with all the firmness, full of gentleness, 
that would have been employed in any similar case, 
toward no matter what sinner, who lacked the most 
simple religious education, so far as to claim a 
place at the Festival of the Spouse, without having re- 
ceived the nuptial robe. They could do no less, they 
could do more. 

But as full of clemency as appeared the refusal, 
Madame la Marquise could not pardon it, and the 
ruin of the Jesuits was sworn. 

History teems with like instances of great catastro- 
phies, brought about by the most contemptible causes. 

We have already spoken of the establishments or 
" reductions," those small model republics, founded in 
the two Americas by the Fathers, and which, accord- 
ing to the unanimous testimony of Protestant writers, 
whether philosophers or otherwise, restored the golden 
age to these countries so remote from Europe. 

Fenelon had only to paint their morning in order to 



France. 159 

give a picture of Salentum, and later, Bernardin de 
Saint Pierre, after Jean Jacques, took from thence the 
principal traits of his charming " Studies of Nature." 

The " Reductions " of Paraguay and Uruguay, 
which Pombal afterward destroyed, were especially 
celebrated \ but besides these, there were colonies of 
the Antilles. Certainly none would have believed that 
this work of civilization, so universally vaunted and 
appreciated, should contain for the Jesuits the germ 
of disease and death. 

So it proved, however. The repulse of Madame de 
Pompadour was one of those occasions that can not be 
suffered to pass, and in order to profit by it, the Minister 
determined to seize the first pretext which should pre- 
sent itself. Let us take the account of the Protestant 
historian Sismondi : 

"The establishment of the missions where the con- 
verted Indians worked," says the Genevese writer, 
" to contribute toward a common fund, administered 
by the Fathers, had induced these Religious to take 
upon themselves a most weighty administration ; in 
economics, it was their charge to support and to clothe 
an entire people.* 



* The intervention of the Jesuits was especially needed to 
protect the credulity and ignorance of the native Indians 
against the cupidity of the European traffickers. — Ad. 
Archier, "The Order of Jesus," p. 257. 



x6o The Jesuits. 

"Father de Lavalette, a Frenchman, treasurer of 
the mission of Martinique, was intrusted with vast 
mercantile interests * but several of his vessels were 
captured by the English in 1775, before any declara- 
tion of war, to the astonishment of the entire merchant 
service of France." 

Such was the point of dispute calmly exposed by a 
historian, who can not be taxed with partiality in favor 
of the Order. Later, it is true, the case became more 
aggravated. 

The action of the English Government was, in fact, 
an excess, which had its origin in the contempt which 
was felt for the Government of France under the 
administration of Choiseul. 

The foot of the stranger weighed on our neck, and 
England thus repaid the concessions of our favoring 
Minister. 

The responsibility of the misfortune which over- 
whelmed the merchant service of France in general, 
and the fleet of Martinique in particular, may be laid 
at the door of the Administration, which, far from com- 
ing to the aid of the innumerable victims of its unskill- 
fulness, treated them with the utmost rigor. 

Father de Lavalette,* plundered of the enormous 



* He was warmly defended by colonial authority. He was 
descended from the elder brother of Jean de la Valette, 
Grand Master of Rhodes. 



France. 161 

wealth of which he had been only the administrator, 
committed the unpardonable fault of disobeying the 
" Constitutions." He speculated in order to fill the 
void in the common fund, and his speculations proved 
unfortunate. 

His creditors closed upon him, and began a suit 
against the Order. 

Before judging the case by which the partial 
Parliament, utterly disregarding facts when acting 
against the Society, searched for and found a pretext 
for flattering at once the recent fury of the favorite, 
and the inveterate hatred of the Minister, we will quit 
Paris, and pass the frontier of Portugal, where Pom- 
bal, the " Great Marquis," inaugurated against the 
Order the first and decisive battle which produced so 
disastrous an influence upon the situation of the Insti- 
tute, both in France and throughout the entire world. 
We are happy to be able, in the chronological order 
of events, to give precedence to the royal tiger over 
*the wolves and foxes of the pack, which are about to 
enjoy a feast of so many saints and martyrs. 
ii 



V. 

POMBAL. 

" What is most strange," said Voltaire, " in their 
disaster (the disaster of the Jesuits) is, that they were 
proscribed in Portugal for having degenerated from 
the requirements of their Institute, and in France for 
having conformed to it too closely." 

Strange is used here in the sense of curious, and 
amusing ; for, in fact, all philosophical Europe had 
been considerably amused by this whole performance, 
and been in no way sparing of scorn, as expressed by 
absurd fancies and humorous sallies, toward the execu- 
tioners who spilt so much blood ; and sarcasm toward 
the imprudent demolishers who threw down so grand 
an edifice, the bulwark of royalty for so many cen- 
turies. 

Delighted as it was at heart, the " Encyclopedic " 
could not do less than find fault. In it was contained 
the journalism of the time. Some slight pity was not 
unbecoming ; just a suggestion of justice as a set-off 
to the whole against those self-constituted champions 
who slash away at random, in all causes ; that gives 
to its garrulity an air of impartiality, and besides, it 
(162) 



Pombal. 163 

is sweet and easy, as well as agreeable, to mourn for 
a murdered enemy. The crocodiles weep. 

In one of the principal squares of Lisbon stands the 
statue of the king, Joseph Emmanuel, son of John V. 
At the foot of this statue one may see that of his Min- 
ister, Don Sebastian de Carvalho y Melho, Count 
d'Oeyras, Marquis de Pombal, whom those of the 
liberal school compare to Cardinal Richelieu. No 
international law prohibits pleasantries of this nature. 

We must not judge a country by the number of 
square miles which its surface covers, and Portugal, an 
insignificant nation, if considered in point of extent 
and population, is historically great. 

It possesses in its annals the history of more dis- 
tinguished men than it has public places to fill with 
their statues in the whole of its illustrious capital of 
Lisbon ; kings, navigators, soldiers, and poets ; Cam- 
oens, Albuquerque, Gama, Cabral, Henry, John, and 
Pedro ; the empire of Brazil is its work, stamped as 
itself with the royal crest of Braganga. Its merchants 
were fortunate, daring, and powerful ; its fleets cov- 
ered the seas ; its colonies dotted the earth ; its no- 
bility was as ancient and haughty as any in Europe ; 
and if its ancient influence has considerably deterio- 
rated, it is because Protestant zeal never allows a Cath- 
olic people to arrogate to themselves power, and on 
account of English disinterestedness, always on the 
watch to repeat the experience of Ireland. 



164 The Jesuits. 

Many rich Portuguese pickings have found their 
way into the yawning pockets of its generous friend, 
England. Certain protections cost not too dear, and 
it is the popular opinion that Portugal will have diffi- 
culty in ever recovering entirely from the effects of the 
pompous, but bloody strategy that was played on her 
ground at her expense, to gain Arthur Wellesley a 
bouquet of titles and a garland of pensions, a 
pocket full of English glory, and a re-christening from 
which he emerged " His Grace, my Lord Duke of 
Wellington." 

Without railing at or blaming those who draw a 
parallel between the Marquis of Pombal and Cardinal 
Richelieu — for even the errors of patriotism are touch- 
ing and command respect — I can not forbear express- 
ing my astonishment that the Portuguese should have 
chosen to erect a statue on the beautiful banks of the 
Tagus, to the Minister who made so notorious an 
effort to betray his country to the point of hiding the 
noble brows of the sons of "Avez" under the furred 
bonnet of Calvin, along with that of the king who suf- 
fered the attempt. 

Were not the Portuguese Anglicized enough with- 
out that ? 

It is hardly worth while censuring Joseph of Bra- 
gancpa in this affair, for, truth to tell, he hardly thought 
except by the brain of his Minister ; but it is certain 
Pombal entertained this project; that he had even 



PombaL 165 

begun to put it into execution, and that he was only 
deterred from its completion by the firm, obstinate 
resistance of the Portuguese themselves, manifested 
without outward sign, but mutely protesting their un- 
alterable resolution of not deserting the Catholic 
Faith. 

Pombal served the English throughout his life, al- 
though playing in their regard the comedy of enmity. 

Never, apparently, did Portuguese oppose more 
strongly their invading caresses, but he had in his 
portfolio the famous project of marriage between the 
Princess of Beira and the Duke of Cumberland ; a 
union which would have eventually made the latter 
inherit the crown of Braganga. 

It can not be alleged that it was his devotion to the 
English which induced him to this step ; he was de- 
voted to none save himself; he courted power, and 
took any road which led thither. 

It is, however, certain that the Jesuits were natural- 
ly opposed to English rule in Portugal, and conse- 
quently to the proposed marriage. 

"The Duke of Cumberland," says the Marshal of 
Belle-Isle,* " expected to become King of Portugal, 
and I have no doubt his design would have been ac- 
complished were it not for the opposition of the 
Jesuits, the confessors of the Royal family," and, he 



* " Political Testament," p. 108. 



1 66 The Jesuits. 

adds, " Behold the crime which could never be par- 
doned them."* 

Already we have a motive for the hatred of Pombal 
against the Jesuits ; he endeavored to import Protest- 
antism into Portugal, and, in conscience, the Jesuits 
could not suffer it ; first cause. 

But he had other reasons for hating the Fathers. 
First of all, he had carried his passion of philosophical 
doctrines to such an excess that the select circle of 
Atheists who ruled the " Encyclopedic " school at 
Paris repudiated him more than once as being a ques- 
tionable ally. 

M. de Choiseul, who later was to follow him step by 
step along the road of persecution, began by ridiculing 
him, along with his protectress, and Madame de Gram- 
mont, her sister, who laughingly asked the Spanish 
Ambassador (Charles III., by the way, had ordered 
the pamphlets of Pombal to be burnt by the hand of 
the executioners), "if the great Marquis of the little 
country always carried a Jesuit astride his nose?" 

Second cause, Pombal had flattered the Jesuits in 
the beginning of his career ; going so far as to invest 
his second son with the habit of the Order ; he now 
wished to do away with the remembrance of this, by 
his zeal in their persecution. 

In the third place, the Jesuits were very powerful ; 

* Ibid. 



PombaL 167 

as the Marshal of Belle-Isle relates, they were con- 
fessors to all the members of the Royal family ;* such 
men as Pombal are jealous of all power, and envy is 
the most essential element of hate. 

The testimony of both ancient and modern moral- 
ists goes to show that the evil-doer detests his victim ; 
for example, the instinctive aversion which the spolia- 
tor nourishes against the despoiled is an example. 

Now, Pombal was the unrelenting spoliator of the 
Jesuits, whom he had robbed, per fas et nefas^ of the 
magnificent establishments of Maragnon, of Uruguay 
and others, by means of bribes, skillfully used to in- 
crease his considerable personal influence. 

By this enumeration, far from complete as it is, 
which we have made, it will be seen that the Marquis 
of Pombal had numerous and solid excuses for hating 
the Jesuits. 

The first of these, in point of time, was the habit of 
a Jesuit put upon the shoulders of his son, in order to 
gain the good-will of Pere Moriera, confessor to the 
king ; the most important was the devastation of the 
establishments at Uruguay, and the violent expulsion 
of thirty thousand Christians of Parana, in order to 
facilitate the work of the pretended gold mines, which, 



* Father Jose Moriera was confessor to the king ; Father 
Timothee to Olivia Maria, Dutchess of Braganca ; Father de 
Costa to Dom Pedro of Portugal. 



1 68 The Jesuits. 

according to Pombal, the Jesuits had discovered in 
these regions, and which proved a mere chimera. 

This was still some years before the occurrence of 
the Lavalette trial. The Court of France testified 
great warmth, apropos of the unjust proceedings of 
the great Marquise, though later she was to inaugurate 
against the same Order, a less bloody, but still more 
senseless war. 

Pombal could pardon the Jesuits neither the terri- 
ble misery into which he had plunged the terrestrial 
paradise of the poor Indians, the absence of the gold 
mines, nor the pleasantries of Mesdames Pompadour 
and Grammont. 

At the time of entering the ministry, he was a man 
of fifty years of age, worn out by incessant struggling 
and unceasing political efforts which had not always been 
attended with success. He had other enemies beside 
the Jesuits. In early life he had incensed the nobility 
by outraging many of its most cherished prejudices, 
and above all in espousing publicly, in the face of his 
equals, what is known as a daughter of the blue blood 
(sa?ig azur) for which in consequence he was obliged 
to submit to many scornful slights and much insolent 
treatment. 

He, however, took horrible revenge, and if it be on 
account of the torrents of blood shed by him, that his 
admirers compare him to Cardinal Richelieu, they are 
far from just in their estimate of him. 



Pombal. . . 169 

In this respect Pombal merits, without question, the 
place of honyr ; in the scale of ferocity, he should be 
compared with none. 

He passed in France for an able Minister ; his con- 
duct during the earthquake at Lisbon had gained him 
great praise ; and indeed, save the Jesuits, whose noble 
devotion to suffering humanity at this period is legend- 
ary, none showed more skill and courage than he. 
M. de Choiseul, notwithstanding the witticisms which 
he poured forth for the king's amusement, held him in 
much esteem, and fondly hoped that " the good Car- 
valho," as he called him, would rid the world some 
time or other of the meddling Jesuit, whom all the 
philosophers and Jansenists "carried astride their 
nose." 

The affair of Uruguay and the hostile attitude which 
Pombal began to assume toward the Holy See, did 
not diminish this hope. 

Between the years 1750 and 1758, at the court 
of his royal master, Pombal still preserved some show 
of friendliness toward members of the Order, who stood 
in high favor there, while at the same time he made 
great efforts to regain the favor of the nobility. But 
in vain ; the nobility hated him, and perhaps they were 
right ; but in despising him as a foe, they were wrong. 

During the night between the 3d and 4th of Sep- 
tember, 17 5 8, at a time which appeared singularly free 
from any political disturbance which could furnish the 



170 * • The Jesuits. 

motive for such an act, an attempt was made to as* 
sassinate the King of Portugal, # 

Joseph had reigned eight years, and was in the forty- 
third year of his age* He was no worse than the 
princes of his time ; his character was free from wick- 
edness, and he had shown in many circumstances an 
honorable solicitude for the public welfare. 

As king, he shared the weakness common to so many 
kings, and willingly allowed others to think for him ; 
he saw through the eyes of another, and from the first 
day unconsciously permitted himself to be led by his 
Minister, who had succeeded in inspiring him with a 
lurking jealousy against Dom Pedro, his brother, a 
young prince much beloved by the people. 

Pedro of Braganga was too popular in Lisbon ; the 
king not sufficiently so. 

In this regard the individual history of Pedro in Por- 
tugal is the eternal history of the brothers of kings — a 
history which has too frequently ended in a manner 
not calculated to increase the confidence of the elder 
brother. There is no better occasion than it to es- 
tablish the credit of a favorite, for an atmosphere of 
distrust lurks about thrones. At Constantinople only 
has a certain remedy been found for this uneasiness ; 
the Sultans strangle their brothers, and end the sub- 
ject. 

For a long time Pombal agitated the weak mind of 
his sovereign with only vague insinuations. It was at 



PombaL 171 

first in connection with himself that Pombal pro- 
nounced the word assassination ; he pretended to 
dread personal danger ; and during the summer of 
1754, we # find Joseph signing a truly extraordinary 
edict, " to provide for the case of the assassination of 
a Minister of State."* 

Joseph, nevertheless, had never passed for a fool — 
entirely. There are those who only come near it. 

The above-mentioned edict supposed a future con- 
tingency of such assassination, decreeing that it be con- 
sidered as high treason, and a magistrate, the Senator 
Gonzales Cordeiro, was charged, apropos of this folly, 
to seek diligently and continually for information. 

Do not smile, but guard yourselves well, people of 
Lisbon ! The number of prisons was tripled, and 
even then lacked room. Forty years before Paris, 
Lisbon had her Terror. Chosen emissaries swarmed 
throughout the city, eager to gain the reward promised 
to the inventor of the man seeking to assassinate the 
Minister of State ! 

The existing state of affairs produced grumblings on 
the part of the philosophers on the borders of the Seine, 
who, when the rumors of the prevailing excess reached 
Paris, accused the philosopher of the banks of the 



* It was said in the decree of August, 1754, that a Minis- 
ter of State might be assassinated by the intrigues of some 
one. — Cretineau-Joly, Vol. I., p. 124. 



172 The Jesuits. 

Tagus, of improving upon the Inquisition, but Pombal 
turned a deaf ear to these critics. 

He was only in the first steps of his journey; mean- 
while, his enemies fell before him like so many flies. 

I repeat it : the Portuguese nobility did wrong to 
despise this man. 

He knew how to make a skillful use of decrees, li- 
bels, riots,* proscriptions, and confiscations ; he was 
great with the pen and in diplomacy ; mighty with 
bolts and with tortures ; he had talent — enormous 
talent. Besides which, he possessed " liberal ideas," 
since he combated the Church. 

Liberal with the axe, liberal with the torch, liberal 
with falsehood ; all is liberal in this connection, even 
hypocrisy united to ferocity. 

Time went on, however, and notwithstanding the 
fantastic provisions of the decree of 1754, the Marquis 
of Pombal was not assassinated. At length, at the end 
of four years, the decree having done nearly all that 
was possible in the way of procuring arbitrary arrests, 
condemnations, banishments, and confiscations, the 
lynx-eyed emissaries began to relax their vigilance, 
and the hidalgos to breathe freely once more, when 
occurred the attempt of the night of September 3d. 



* Witness that of Oporto, raised in favor of the English, 
while the Minister ostensibly opposed the English influence 
at Lisbon.' 



Pombal. 173 

The king had left the hotel Tavora, and was return- 
ing to the palace, not in his own coach, but in that of 
a rich gentleman named Antonio Tejeira, when, in a 
cross street, two pistol shots (others said four) \vere 
fired at his Majesty by some unknown person. Who 
was the person ? Was not this Unknown the famous 
" some one " of the decree ? 

The king had been wounded in the right arm. This 
was nearly two years after the knife thrust of Damiens. 

Jesuits ! What a glorious occasion ! They have 
asserted against all probability, against good sense 
even, the knife of Damiens to be that of the Jesuits ;* 
they accused them of the mysterious shooting in the 
face of certainty itself. 

In regard to those men whom he had checked in 
their work of self-sacrifice and devotion in the New 
World, whom he had pillaged, outraged, and persecuted 
in every possible and almost impossible manner, Pom- 
bal felt himself so guilty, that to the depths of his heart, 
so full of hatred, nothing could restore security save 
their death. 

Jesuits ! He uttered this sonorous name, whose men- 



* Voltaire had written, refusing to compromise himself in 
the falsity of this accusation (letter of the 3d of March, 
*7°3)> " I have no affection for the Jesuits, but I will raise 
posterity in their favor, if I accuse them of a crime of which 
Europe and Damiens justifies them. I will not serve merely 
a vile echo of the Jansenists." 



174 The Jesuits. 

tion serves to wake, unquestionably, as many echoes 
of evil passions, as did even the divine name which it 
contains. And it grants the Jews an eternal feast of 
Cakary. 

But as he detested the great body of the Portuguese 
nobility nearly as much as he hated the Society of Je- 
sus, he resolved to make the blow strike in two places, 
and massacre all his enemies at once. 

An impenetrable cloud envelopes these proceedings 
where Pombal was accuser, judge, and executioner. 

It certainly seemed a difficult task to implicate the 
Jesuits, confessors and friends of the king and of the 
whole royal family, in an attempt upon the life of his 
Majesty. 

What motive could persuade them to such a crime ? 
" Reus is est cui prodest delictum" says the pagan 
wisdom of the Romans. " Never seek from the crimi 
nal to know the profit of the crime." 

Pombal, a doctor of the University of Coimbra, was 
not ignorant of this axiom, and had he been gifted 
with prescience, would have seen it condemn him be- 
fore the tribunal of posterity. In truth, even the 
writers opposed to the Catholic belief, while slightly 
praising him, as in duty bound, through gratitude for the 
war of extermination which he waged against the Jes- 
uits, show neither warmth nor sympathy in his regard. 
Throughout the praise, commanded by the "Mot 
d'Ordre," there is an undercurrent of repugnance, some- 



PombaL 175 

thing of the reserve and reluctance which M. de 
Choiseul, Madame de Grammont, and even the 
" Encyclopedic " display to clasp the bloody hand of 
this State butcher. 

He is a questionable ally, and awakens shame even 
within those who profited by his base work. 

The English alone, his pretended enemies, have 
cordially and openly applauded him. 

Does the reader suppose, then, that it is intended to 
designate Pombal as the mysterious " some one " in 
the mystery of the shooting ? Certainly not, if by this 
it be supposed that he wished to kill his royal master ; 
he would have lost too much by his death, as is proved 
by the sequel. If it is supposed, on the contrary, that 
the attempt was merely an audacious ruse, intended to 
excite the timorous fears of Joseph, we reply that no 
historical proof can be brought forward to support this 
theory, and that its only foundation lies in the savage 
duplicity which was the chief characteristic of the 
slayer of " The Fathers." As the pistol-shots were 
necessary to further his sanguinary ends, some have 
thought that he instigated them, inasmuch as the 
whole criminal prosecution, which was exclusively his 
work, is throughout a shameful instance of the triumph 
of error. 

But all that is known of the events of this period 
utterly refutes this theory, as well as a second, enter- 
tained for a time, which attributed the attack to a mis- 



176 The Jesuits. 

take. According to this latter version, the king had been 
assailed in the carriage of Tejeira, which he occupied, 
by some personal enemies of Tejeira, who mistook the 
object of their vengeance. It was by means of this 
version that Pombal implicated the unfortunate Duke 
of Aveiro, reserved for so frightful a sentence. It is 
time that the truth of the matter be finally established 
in the popular mind, as related with slight alterations 
in the Memoirs of Pombal himself. 

Joseph of Braganca, a feeble imitator of his royal 
contemporary, Louis XV., had also his gallant advent- 
ures, conducted it is true with less scandal ; for on this 
point no court can compare with ours. The inmates 
only of the palace of Alcantara knew that the king 
most frequently directed his steps toward a spacious 
hotel, spacious and isolated as a castle, which com- 
manded a view of the mouth of the River Tagus, 
beyond its vast gardens. 

The master of this dwelling was the old Marquis of 
Tavora, one of the proudest members of the Portu- 
guese nobility, and the chief of what is known as the 
" Hidalgos." * Pombal had been refused the hand of 
a daughter of this house for his eldest son ; and he 
had encountered a similar refusal in other families. 
He remembered it. 



* This name, common to all noble blood across the Pyr- 
enees, seems to have attained a quasi-political signification 
during the Ministry of Pombal. 



Pombal. 177 

Whether truthfully or not, it was whispered at court 
that the king had insulted, by his advances, the young 
and beautiful Dona Teresa, wife of the eldest son of 
the Marquis. 

In France, the manners of the court had become 
so corrupt, that such a fact would have been deemed 
almost an honor, as is shown by numerous sad exam- 
ples in its history ; but in spite of the contagion of 
skepticism which had begun to infect Lisbon, the 
ancient Portuguese blood still retained its pride. 

I am far from asserting that the young Marquis of 
Tavora was right in punishing his king, who had dis- 
honored him ; I urge, on the contrary, that the king 
who does a wrong of this nature, deserves as much 
pity as any ordinary man ; nay, even more so, because 
he is more guilty, being more powerful ; but I only re- 
late that, in defiance of the laws of God, which visits 
with equal reprobation the crime of the seducer and 
the vengeance sought by the spouse, according to the 
savage law of Portuguese honor, the life of the king 
was forfeit to Tavora. 

I allege nothing in favor or defense of this custom ; 
I confine myself merely to a statement of facts. As a 
Christian, Tavora. was obliged to pardon ; as a hidalgo, 
in accordance with the code of the hidalgos, and the 
terrible spirit of justice which pervaded the Peninsula, 
he was obliged to strike even his king. 

And everything points to the probability that he did 
12 



178 The Jesuits. 

strike. The exception made in favor of the young 
Marquise Teresa of Tavora, amid the cruelties prac- 
ticed upon all the other members of her family, proves 
at once the injury committed and the attempted 
vengeance. 

Another strong and decisive proof of this is the in- 
terest, sui generis y manifested by the French Ambassa- 
dor under the express order of his court, for her safety, 
whilst her husband, whether guilty or not, lay suffering 
in the depths of a dungeon ; an interest wholly lacking 
in behalf of the innocent father, and the admirable 
mother dying in tortures. It is a chapter on Louis 
XV. and his age. 

I add, that the Jesuits had no place nor part in these 
proceedings except that with which Pombal charged 
them. 

All writers have commented upon the inactivity 
which distinguished PombaPs movements during the 
three months following the attempt. 

Hitherto, the feline side of his nature had not dis- 
played itself. He resembled a tiger-cat raising him- 
self slowly — before bounding — to bound like all beasts 
of prey. He wishes to rush unawares upon the victim 
that he has lulled to sleep. 

On the 12th of December, after sunset, a mounted 
guard patroled the city, while a detachment of foot- 
soldiers took up their position in the narrow streets of 
the quarter occupied by the nobility. 



Pombal. l 79 

All Lisbon inquired what fete was about to be 
celebrated, for all had forgotten the affair of the assas- 
sination, which, indeed, many altogether doubted, an 
opinion which was shared by the court of France, 
where Choiseul had remarked, upon hearing it : " It is 
o e of Carvalho ? s frolics." 

At the hour of seven, a squad of soldiery presented 
themselves before the principal entrance of the Hotel 
Tavora, all other outlets being strictly guarded. 

They demanded admittance in the name of the king, 
and immediately kindled their torches. 

The king had often partaken of hospitality within 
this picturesque dwelling, and even in his slavish 
weakness he was still capable of generous instincts ; 
that he was ignorant of what was taking place at this 
hour, we must believe, in compassion to his memory. 

The doors were opened. The soldiers passed in and 
scattered themselves throughout the palace. A cap- 
tive hand was laid on every inmate, from the master 
to the most infirm servitor, and all were conducted to 
the new prison, built by Pombal, near the College of 
Saint Antonio. 

The prison was a spacious building, and certainly it 
needed to be, for at one time, it is a certain fact, Lis- 
bon counted more than four thousand State prisoners. 

Our " 93 " was eclipsed in advance, for such a number 
of captives in a capital which contained only one hun- 
dred and fifty thousand inhabitants surpasses the most 



180 The Jesuits. 

sinister " curiosities " of History. Our "Diction- 
naires " of liberal education are right in declaring that 
Pombal was no ordinary Minister. 

Elenora, Marchioness of Tavora, she who had re- 
fused the hand of Pombal's son for her daughter, was 
separated from her husband and children, and con- 
fined, perhaps by especial grace, " in pace " of a con- 
vent ; the other women, servants and mistresses, were 
plunged into dungeons and subjected to the most 
rigorous measures. 

Domestics and masters, the men disappeared as if 
the earth had swallowed them. 

Thanks to the honorable, but exclusive solicitude 
of M. de Choiseul, shown by his correspondence with 
M. de Saint Julien, French charge d'affaires at Lisbon, 
in obedience to the humane spirit of Madame de 
Pompadour, we are able to state that the interesting 
Dona Teresa was treated with exceptional lenity. 
Louis XV. was satisfied. 

One voice at least is raised (that of Saint Julien) to 
assert that this unhappy young creature merited 
neither the insulting interest of Choiseul nor the 
infamous clemency of Pombal. 

We learn, by means of the same correspondence, that 
Pombal was deeply incensed on learning that the subal- 
terns, touched by the misery of the prisoners, had afford- 
ed some slight alleviations of their miserable condition. 

Besides the family of Tavora, a great number of other 



PombaL 181 

" hidalgos " were arrested on the same night, among 
others, Don Jose de Mascarenhas y Lancastre, Duke 
of Aveiro, a cousin of Dona Elenora, and one of the 
chiefs of the nobility ; one Souza, and Milho, nearly 
related to the king, and a more distant kinsman of the 
Minister, Don Miguel de Antonguia, etc. 

The same night also saw some of the Jesuits taken 
prisoners, among others, P. Hyacinthe da Costa, con- 
fessor of the prince Dom Pedro. 

A stupor of terror settled on Lisbon. The phrase, 
" State of Siege," was not yet in vogue, but the thing 
existed. 

None but mercenary soldiers were seen in the streets, 
and the king ceased to leave the palace. A leaden 
pall weighed on the city. Any one who dared express 
a doubt of the guilt of the prisoners, or let fall the least 
sentiment of pity, was instantly arrested. 

This motley collection of State prisoners, whose large 
number I have remarked, was composed of nearly as 
many trades-people as gentlemen. 

It was now necessary to institute some official pro- 
ceeding ; the people looked for it, and the king was 
an honest man. 

Pombal resolved to enact the judicial farce of an 
examination. It was poorly played. He threw aside 
all semblance of decorum ; his judgment forsook him. 
He defied even common sense ; his hatred had mounted 
to his brain and intoxicated him. 



1 82 The Jesuits. 

According to the Portuguese law, the accused were 
entitled to be judged by their peers ; the Duke of 
Aveiro and the Marquis of Tavora were the two first 
noblemen in Portugal ; Pombal refused them the 
privilege. He would not even permit them to be 
judged by the ordinary tribunals. 

He formed what the religious and political Protest- 
ants of all times have incessantly opposed to Authority, 
in order to overreach her whenever an occasion pre- 
sented itself, from the time of Henry VIII. and Calvin, 
down to Robespierre ; he created a fashion of revolu- 
tionary tribunal devoid of legal competency, which he 
named the " Court of Mistrust," * (curious fatality of 
names), and he naturally composed this tribunal, as 
such always are, of his own creatures, among whom 
were two of his colleagues, da Cunha and Cartte- 
Real. And he presided himself ! 

As the proceedings had not yet been confined solely 
to the Jesuits, the " Encylcopedie" grumbled a little 
at the sight of these monstrosities. 

The Parisian philosophers upheld the nobility, by 
whom they subsisted. M. de Saint-Priest, a not over 
equitable Judge, alludes frequently, in his " History 
of the Fall of the Jesuits," to the bad effects produced 
in the philosophic world by the terrible freaks of 
Pombal. 



* The name existed before Pombal, 



Pombal. 183 

If possible, they would have sustained his action, 
on account of the community of " liberal ideas," but 
he had gone, in truth, a little too far, and M. de Saint- 
Priest forgets himself so far, as to allow the following 
phrase to escape him : " They pitied the victims and 
laughed at the executioner.' ' 

This confession, in such a mouth, is not insignificant 
— "laughed at him." Indeed, the Choiseul coterie 
had long been accustomed to do this. 

Beginning with Madame de Pompadour, all re- 
garded him as a monster even more ridiculous than 
ferocious. 

They were wrong in their estimate, as you will find ; 
I have already said this apropos of the nobility of Lis- 
bon ; never is a Pombal to be despised ; never is a 
hyena to be laughed at. 

Not content with presiding in this " Court of Mis- 
trust," Pombal took upon himself the charge of exam- 
inations — an action wholly without precedent, and 
which provoked remonstrances from two of the most 
celebrated jurists in Portugal — Freiro, and Bucallao, 
the Senator. Still more, Pombal recorded the sentence, 
which is still in existence, in his own handwriting.* 

And what were the means employed to perfect this 
diabolically philosophical examination ? 

Proscribed, and even false evidence, of shameless 



* Cr6tineau-Joly, Vol. V., p. 153. 



184 The Jesuits. 

and open intimidation, and above all, the torture, are 
certain measures to obtain convictions ; the latter is a 
means which never fails to produce its effect, Odious 
in the hands of upright judges, in the clutches of buf- 
foons who only profane and caricature Justice, it 
proves an excellent instrument. 

The respectable " Dictionnaire " intended for the use 
of the young, to which I have already made several 
allusions, says, in speaking of Pombal, that he served 
his country with fervor (I fully believe it) ; that he 
was an able Minister (a proof !) ; but that he mani- 
fested, perhaps, too ardent a tendency toward the 
philosophical ideas. 

Why too great ? One can never cherish too dearly 
that which is good, and he only went as far as the 
torture. 

It is true that this torture brought about a judicial 
carnage, of which the very recital freezes the blood ; 
but it was for a worthy motive — torture and carnage 
produced the extermination of the Jesuits. 

Must not that be taken into consideration ? Jesus 
said of the sister of Lazarus, " Much is forgiven her, 
because she has loved much." 

Why do not the Dictionaries say of this philosophic 
Minister, " Not only much, but all should be forgiven 
him ; because he has terribly hated " ? 

This, with the approbation of those whom it may 
concern, and always with a regard to the interest of 



Pombal. 185 

youth, whose inconsiderate results are apt to trouble 
sometimes the consciences of the approvers of " Dic- 
tionnaires." 

What astonishes me is — but why should I concern 
myself with such matters ? These quarrels are merely 
family disagreements between great men who have 
made " Dictionnaires," and little men who will make 
them. 

The family of Tavora, and all the other accused, 
remained mute under the torture ; but the unfortu- 
nate Duke of Aveiro was vanquished by torments. He 
was a great nobleman, but his was not a valiant 
heart. 

He accused his fellow-prisoners of all that was de- 
sired, and, more dead than alive, implicated also the 
Jesuits. 

It is true that when he recovered his senses, he re- 
tracted this accusation, but Pombal held his testi- 
mony, and would not relinquish it. They refused to 
record the retraction. 

The sentence of death was rendered against the 
relations and friends of Tavora on the 12th day of 
January, 1759. Pombal, fearing an outburst of popu- 
lar indignation, caused the scaffold to be raised during 
the night, at Belem, outside the city, where two regi- 
ments of mercenaries were stationed. The platform, 
illuminated by the glare of the torches, was raised 
eighteen feet from the ground. 



1 86 The Jesuits, 

The soldiers encumbered the place and water-side 
to such an extent that the people were forced to take 
refuge on the river in boats, which was dotted with a 
thousand barks, from whence ascended groans and 
maledictions. 

Thus passed the night of the 13th of January. 

At daybreak the domestics of the Duke of Aveiro 
were brought thither, fastened to the corners of the 
scaffold, and burnt alive. 

Elenora, Marchioness of Tavora, next arrived alone> 
the cord about her neck, the crucifix in her hand, and 
attired in the garments which had been rent by the 
torture. 

Pombal must have been present somewhere in the 
vicinity, for his Memoirs recount vividly the awful and 
sublime scene ; but where was the beautiful Teresa, 
who alone awakened the tender pity of Louis XV. and 
his Minister Choiseul ? She it was who had attracted 
the lightning which had blasted this noble house, where 
she had been welcomed as a well-beloved daughter, 
and she alone had received the insult of being spared 
in it. 

We also pity her, and only her: Who would pity 
Dona Elenora with her proud, gray head erect, press- 
ing her crucified God to her heart? The executioner 
would have bound her feet. She said to him without 
anger, " Man, I beseech you, forget not who I am; 
touch me only to kill me." 



Pombal. 187 

The executioner fell on his knees before her ; Pom- 
bal himself relates that Dona Elenora took a ring from 
her finger. She' was one of that race who reward ev- 
ery service, even the last. 

" Here," she said to the executioner, presenting 
it to him, " every work deserves its wages ; I have 
only this, and I give it to you, that you may per- 
form your duty well." 

The executioner arose and did his duty. 

After the first noble blood had reddened the block, 
the others came in turn, the old Marquis of Tavora 
first, then the husband of Dona Teresa. Poor wife ! 
Do you think I speak in mockery ? No, poor, poor 
woman, who, in the opinion of M. de Choiseul, was 
spared. 

There remained the other sons of Elenora, of whom 
the youngest had only attained his twentieth year ; her 
son-in-law, and according to some, her daughter; 
then the long file of officers and servitors of the 
household, who died like Christians and brave Portu- 
guese. 

The last sufferer was the unfortunate Duke of 
Aveiro, whose limbs were hardly able to support the 
weight of his body. He was bound on the wheel, his 
shoulders being covered with rags by a nice refine- 
ment of vengeance. 

This Pombal was insatiable ! And the great Cardi- 
nal, who, when he killed, killed grandly, if it be per- 



1 88 The Jesuits. 

mitted to statesmen in the other world to know of the 
insulting parallels to which they are subjected here 
below, must smile in scornful disdain at being com- 
pared with Pombal. 

In dying, Aveiro glutted to the full his enemy's ap- 
petite for vengeance. For nearly one hour he strug- 
gled on the wheel, which slowly ground his bones, 
extorting from him shrieks of agony which were heard 
even in Lisbon. 

Pombal relates in his Memoirs, with evident satis- 
faction, that the Duke was Grand hereditary Master 
of the royal palace, President of the Court of the 
palace, first Grandee of Portugal, etc. The house of 
Mascarenhas had been founded by George, a natural 
son of John II., called the Perfect. 

When all was over, the torch was put to the ma- 
chine of death, scaffold and all, and the corpses, half 
consumed, were flung into the Tagus. 

Certainly the " dark ages" present few examples of 
carnage so skillfully carried out as this. The putting 
of the work into motion lacks some semblance of prob- 
ability, and we could wish for a little less of that gener- 
ous want of ceremony in that which takes the place of 
the criminal examination ; but the execution is above 
all eulogy, and I allude to it only with the respect 
which is due to a master-piece. 

Why, then, do the approved " Dictionnaires " ignore 
this subject ? Is it because they deny its truth, not with- 



PombaL 189 

standing the testimony of Pombal himself? Is it not 
only rendering justice its due to avert, by the recital of 
this action, the unmerited reproach — although most 
gently administered, it is true — against this Minister, 
charging him with having too strongly inclined toward 
the rt enlightened ideas " of his age ? 

In fine, however they arrange it, Pombal is a ques- 
tionable ally. 

After his death the Senate of the " Encyclopedic," 
that mother of " Dictionnaires," would have repudiated 
him, without a scruple, if it had not been that he 
atoned for his massacre of " Hidalgos " by his heca- 
tomb of slaughtered Jesuits. Happily for him, blood 
has washed out blood. 

After what had taken place, it will not be surprising 
to learn that the great Marquis still retained in prison 
the relations and friends of the sufferers who had not 
shared their fate ; that he razed to the ground all their 
hotels and palaces, and by his order salt was sown on 
their sites. The arms of the house of Tavora, and 
those of their pretended accomplices, were effaced in 
the Hall of Chevaliers in the Castle of Cintra, where 
their escutcheons may still be seen, covered with a 
black veil, like the portrait of Faliero in the ducal 
palace at Venice. 

This last fact is remarkable, because the wicked 
judgment which commanded it remained in force 



190 The Jesuits. 

comparatively only a few years. In fact, Pombal 
himself lived long enough to feel, even in this world, 
the weight of God's hand. By the decree of the 
Grand Cortes, dated the 7th of April, 1781, during his 
life-time, all his victims were declared reinstated, and 
by the same decree Pombal was himself dishonored. 

But at the time of which we write, this tardy and in- 
sufficient justice was still far away; it did not occur 
until after the death of Joseph, who never succeeded 
in throwing off the yoke of his tyrant. And this is the 
particular in which Pombal most closely resembles 
Richelieu ; his king was his slave. 

When he had finished razing walls, the great Marquis 
erected a monument worthy of him; which was a 
beautifully constructed pillory, intended, by special 
privilege, only for members of the nobility exclusively. 

Those who think that now, at least, the measure of 
his vengeance was complete, are mistaken. The 
vengeance of Pombal was to extend much further, and 
the fact deserves to be chronicled. 

Later, in his implacable old age, he employed the 
last breath of his expiring political power to "forcibly 
effect a union between the granddaughter of the great 
Elenora, Marchioness of Tavora, and the Count of 
Oeyras, his son. These nuptials recall to mind the 
bridals of fabulous ages, on which is founded antique 
tragedy ! 

But the ways of God point often to the very reverse 



' % PombaL 191 

of human logic ; and from this frightfully incongruous 
union a peaceful happiness was born. 

This mingling of the blood of the victims with that 
of their persecutor, which might have been expected 
to remain sterile, or produce most unhappy fruits, was 
blessed in its numerous posterity. 

Reconciliation arose out of violence, and the tragic 
convulsions which- had distinguished the enmity of two 
haughty races gave place to the undivided honor of a 
numerous and tenderly-united family. 

We would fain have done with the subject of Pom- 
bal,*but of his two objects of" hate he had yet only 
attained the first; in the slaughter of the "Hidalgos" 
the other had as yet escaped him. We may say that 
the massacre of the nobility was only a means to ar- 
rive at the heart of his real enemy, the Society of 
Jesus. 

He was transported with savage joy when excess- 
ive suffering extorted from the unfortunate Duke of 
Aveiro an accusation against the Fathers. 

It placed the game in his hands, and, as he himself 
said, he that day won his stake. 

Between the time of the Duke's confession and the 
hour when, returned to consciousness, he in vain 
supplicated his persecutors to receive his retraction, 
Pombal, with the same pen which had written the 
famous edict, signed the order to arrest ten Jesuits, 
among whom was the Portuguese Provincial, Hen- 



192 The Jesuits. 

riquez ; Father Malagrida, spiritual director of the 
Marchioness Elenora; Oliveira, confessor of Marie, 
Duchess of Braganga ; Suarez Mattos, and even Joseph 
Moreiro, notwithstanding his dignity of royal confessor. 

As for Father Costa, who was first submitted to th-e 
torture, in the secret hope of wringing from him some 
avowal sufficient to compromise his penitent, the 
prince, Dom Pedro, he had been arrested and thrown 
into prison some days previous. 

Malagrida, as confessor of the Marchioness Elenora, 
Mattos as being a friend of Rebeira, and Alonguia, 
and Father Jean Alexandre, for having returned from 
the Indies in the same vessel with the Tavoras, were 
all three condemned to death by the edict of the 
12th of January, but they did not suffer in the mas- 
sacre of Belem. 

Fombal was gathering all his forces in order to take 
the surer leap, as he had waited, after the attempted 
assassination of the king. 

The tiger was settling on his haunches for a spring 
His second and more mighty bound, made always 
under cover of darkness, took place during the night 
which preceded the 16th of February. All the 
houses of the Society throughout Portugal, colleges as 
well as residences, were surrounded by his followers, 
accompanied by detachments of soldiers, and all the 
Jesuits in the kingdom awoke in the morning to find 
themselves prisoners. 



PotnbaL 193 

Collectively, and without any distinctness, the Jes- 
uits were accused of having favored the regicide plot, 
and to give some idea of the complete tyranny which 
was exercised over the unhappy king, it is sufficient to 
state that neither himself nor the queen could obtain 
permission to see Father Joseph Moreiro, for whom 
the royal pair entertained a most sincere affection. 

Besides this general accusation, the greater number 
of the Fathers were inculpated as having been the 
private counselors and friends of the conspirators, of 
having fomented their hatred, and excited their mur- 
murs, either in the tribunal of penance or the privacy 
of social life. 

This vague assertion had a still more vague founda- 
tion. It was based upon a single visit which the 
Duke of Aveiro had made to the College of San An- 
tonio, for which a ' most probable explanation was 
given, to wit, that in obedience to the laws of cour- 
tesy, the Duke had attended on that day a Thesis of 
Philosophy, sustained by a young relation of his, the 
heir of his great house. 

Evidently, Pombal hardly took the trouble to dis- 
guise his sinister intentions, since under so flimsy a 
pretext the names of three Jesuits were inserted in 
the death-sentence of Aveiro, Tavora, and so many 
others. 

Among the Jesuits condemned, was the celebrated 
Gabriel Malagrida, whose martyrdom we shall relate. 
13 



194 The Jesuits. 

No Jesuit mounted the scaffold at Belem. It 
was only on the 28th of June that the Minister 
launched against this Order the edict of general pro- 
scription. The intervening months they had passed 
in new and old prisons, subjected to the greatest in- 
dignities. The " Killer of Fathers," as he was for a 
long time termed in Uruguay, had richly earned his 
title ; during the persecutions directed by him against 
the establishments of the Order in South America, 
several professed members, and numbers of novices 
or brothers, without counting the throng of native 
Christians who were of the one great family of Jesus, 
watered with their blood the soil of the New World 
which they had fertilized by their labor, and which the 
violence of Portuguese myrmidons again made sterile ; 
but this was only a feeble imitation in its slaughters 
and spoliations of the bloody drama enacted in the 
mother-country. 

Pombal was intoxicated with the evil of his own 
creating ; rage had mounted to his brain and produced 
delirium ; he saw only through a medium of blood. 

Others before him, and from remote ages, have 
made use of the prison as a deadly instrument of 
punishment ; but it was reserved for him to perfect 
this base and barbarous means to such a degree that 
eight hundred unfortunates alone survived the dun- 
geons which had enclosed nearly six thousand victims. 

The historians have produced divers letters of these 



Pombal. 195 

captives, more calculated to excite pity than the living 
deaths of the " Leads of Venice."* These are not all 
written by Jesuits ; but there is a letter from one of 
the members of the Society of Jesus, which has be- 
come celebrated for the admirable gentleness which it 
expressed, though written in the midst of unheard-of 
torments. It is signed by Father Laurent Kaalen, who 
denominates himself " Captive of Jesus Christ," and 
is dated from the prison or Fort of St. Julien at Lis- 
bon, the 12th of October, 1766. At that time, this 
innocent sufferer, or rather saint, had already passed 
seven years in chains, and this without even giving 
utterance to a single complaint, only praying night 
and day for his persecutor ; earnestly entreating the 
infinite mercy of God in behalf of Don Sebastian de 
Carvalho, Marquis of Pombal. 

But how could it be expected that Pombal and his 
kind should credit such things ; in conscience, how 
could you expect it ? This pardon in the midst of 
tortures surpasses the limits of the probable, and I am 
afraid that there is a dash of malice in the provoking 
pleasure which I experience in making myself appear 
as a hypocrite in their eyes, by exalting, as I do, such 
apparent hypocrisy ! 

Jesuits ! Jesuits ! Jesuits ! Assassins who never as- 
sassinate, but are ever assassinated ; haughty ones who 



Dungeons under the roof. 



196 t The Jesuits. 

kiss the earth; ambitious ones who vow to accept 
neither honors nor high places ; calumniators who are 
steeped in calumny, and absorb it without contradic- 
tion, who return benefits for injuries; impossible! 
incredible men ! heirs of divine infamy ! I can not 
comprehend you fully, since it is necessary to be a 
saint in order to sound the depths of your consciences ; 
but I understand enough to kindle within my heart an 
ardent admiration for you, and to make me experience 
a perhaps culpable pride in proclaiming it with all the 
strength of my voice. 

I do not ask for your famous secret ; I believe I 
know it; my crucifix has told it me; but I conjure 
you, Jesuits, oh ! Jesuits, abhorred by the large class of 
writers who act consistently with the character which 
they assume, and tenderly cherished by me, who once 
essayed to despise you ; (alas ! how difficult I found 
it) ; confide to me only, whisper low in my ear, I will 
not repeat it ; reveal to me, ye assassins of kings, who 
protect and love you, what prevented you from plant- 
ing ten, twenty, one hundred, even a thousand of your 
historical poignards in the bosom of this Pombal ? 

Was it the fact of your incurable dissimilation ? Is 
it in order to more completely mystify the world, ye 
astonishing jugglers, that ye slay your friends and al- 
low your enemies to live unmolested ? . . . . 

Pombal lived to complete his eighty-second year. 
While directing the pistol-shots against the poor miser- 



Pombal. 197 

able King Joseph, your penitent, do you, then, ad- 
minister to Pombal surreptitiously, traitorously, Jesuit- 
ically, some philter to produce long life ? 

I must confess to having experienced a sentiment 
of impatience, even of indignation, in reading the too 
beautiful letter of Father Laurent Kaulen, from whom 
seven awful years of captivity could not extort the 
least expression of bitterness, but the contrary. I 
should have bowed to the earth in reverence before 
the superhuman grandeur of this soul, I who can 
readily believe it, and experience a proud satisfaction 
in asserting my belief, and a pity not unmingled with 
contempt for those who can not credit it ; I should 
have bowed down, I repeat, and I do not say that I 
have not done so. 

But across my admiration as a Christian, a senti- 
ment altogether human passes, and I question if the 
heroism of the martyrs had the right to encourage in 
this way the violence of their persecutors. 

Is it meet that the miraculous charity of the saint 
be prolonged to the point of fomenting the impious 
audacity of the persecutor ? 

There are times when I am irresistibly seized by 
the thought that the Jesuits did not oppose sufficient 
resistance to the Marquis of Pombal ; that there was 
a weakness on their part, as well as that of the Church 
herself, both in regard to the Portuguese Minister and 
to Choiseul, his. less daring imitator, and all the other 



198 The Jesuits. 

sanguinary despots who followed in the way of murder 
and spoliation. 

Sublime weakness ! says an eminent writer ; but I 
question if weakness be ever sublime. 

The letter of Father Kaulen is cited at length in 
the " Journal of Literature and Art," published by the 
Protestant, Christopher de Murr. It awakened a deep 
and sorrowful interest throughout Europe, and only 
shortly preceded the fall of Pombal. 

Written from the " depths of a subterranean dun- 
geon, infected with disease, where the water pene- 
trates, rotting away the garments," and leaving the 
prisoner nearly naked ; tended by " an extremely hard- 
hearted jailor, who did all in his power to increase 
the sufferings of these unfortunates, already so weighted 
with misery," while to crown all, " they were offered 
their liberty and all kinds of good treatment if they 
would abjure their Institute." Is it necessary to state 
that none took advantage of this offer ? 

In this prison of St. Julien, where even the conso- 
lation of the Eucharist was wanting to the agonizing, 
where air, garments, and even bread, which was only 
measured out in sufficient quantity to barely sustain life 
in these hideous dungeons, where all was lacking save 
cruel treatment, of which there was a prodigal excess, 
there were twenty-seven Fathers of the Province of 
Goa, in Hindostan ; one of the Province of Malabar, 
ten of that of Portugal, nine of Brazil, twenty-three o f 



PombaL 199 

Maragnon, ten of Japan, twelve of China; in all, 
eighty- two. 

"In this number there were one Italian, thirteen 
Germans, three Chinese, fifty-four Portuguese, two 
Spaniards, and three Frenchmen." The Frenchmen 
were reclaimed, not, be it understood, by the Govern- 
ment of M. de Choiseul, but by the queen, Marie Lec- 
zinska, in person. 

Out of this number of eighty-two, thirty-seven Fa- 
thers died martyrs in the prison. In the dungeons of 
Azeitao, which contained seventy-three, thirty-one Fa- 
thers perished under the weight of their suffe rings. 
The " Matador dos Padres " merited his name equally 
well in Europe as in the New World. 

In the long list of martyrs appear the names of 
three cousins of Pombal, Christopher and Jean de 
Carvalho, who perished in the dungeons of Azeitao, 
and Joachim de Carvalho, who died in the prison of 
Almeida. It numbers, besides, one Albuquerque, 
four of the name of da Costa, one da Cunha, one Fon- 
seca, and one Castro. This very incomplete list is 
taken from the Protestant Journal of Murr.* If we 
add to these the victims who perished at sea, in the 
holds of ships, and in the other prisons, we will arrive 
at seven hundred, the total number, as set forth by 
Father Oliveira, in his memorial to Queen Maria.t 



* For the year 1780. 

f Journal of Murr, Vol. X., p. 149. 



200 The Jesuits. 

Besides these, a great number of other Fathers had 
been stowed away without provisions, in merchant 
vessels, to be thrown on the shores of Italy, after the 
edict of proscription. The number of these exiles, 
counting those from Brazil and the other Portuguese 
colonies, is estimated at two thousand, and this was 
only the overflow of the prisons which remained full. 

Among those who remained prisoners, was Father 
Joseph Moreiro; notwithstanding the supplications of 
the queen herself, in vain did the wife of Joseph beg 
with tears the liberty of the friend who has so long 
directed her conscience ; Pombal was absolute master. 

The Pope, Clement XIII., protested ; Pombal 
evoked before his eyes the spectre of a schism with 
which he wbuld rend Portugal, and the Pope was 
hushed. By way of thanks for his silence, Pombal 
insolently dismissed his ambassador, and confiscated 
the goods of the Jesuits. (1761). 

There are some " imaginative writers," who in re- 
counting these events make Pombal the victim and 
the Jesuits the persecutors. 

When there is question of them, no audacity is too 
great for error. In reality, far, from shrinking, they 
did not even attempt to parry the blows which crushed 
them. 

It may be said that in Portugal, the Jesuits were 
defended only by the Holy See, who feebly, but in a 



Pombal. 201 

paternal spirit, combated for them. As for them- 
selves, they had strength only to die. 

Among the victims of the " Killer of Fathers," the 
most illustrious is Gabriel Malagrida, whom Pombal, 
with awful irony, and in spite of his determined par- 
tisanship of so-called " liberal ideas," vowed, to em- 
ploy his own words, to "bind upon the funeral pile of 
the Inquisition," and who in fact perished in the 
flames on the 21st of September, 1761, on the Place 
Auto-da-fe of Lisbon. He it is of whom Voltaire 
has said in his " Age of Louis XV.," * with an indig- 
nation which seems slightly forced : " The criminal 
was burnt only for being a fool," which is a calumny 
clothed with a thin veil of pity. 

Malagrida was no more a fool than Francis Xavier. 
It is true that Voltaire afterward gives utterance to 
some more noble lines, characterizing the conduct of 
Pombal in this infamous affair : " The excess of ridi- 
cule and absurdity was joined to the excess of hor- 
ror,'^ but one can denounce the executioner without 
insulting the martyr. 

This " fool " was one of the most glorious mission- 
aries that Portugal has ever produced. He was 
seventy-three years of age, of which he had passed 
forty in conquering souls for God, in savage countries, 



Vol. XXII. of his Works, p. 35. \ Ibid. 



202 The Jesuits. 

and he answered, when questioned by the courtiers of 
Jean V., by what right he "disturbed the peace" of 
these poor Indians, with the idea of another world : 
" By the right which Jesus has given me in dying for 
them." . 

If the sentiments of these courtiers savor of a 
more advanced period — for the century was at that 
time only forty years old — and sound like those of the 
school of Raynal, I answer that courtiers have ever 
been philosophers, even as philosophers have ever 
been courtiers. 

Recognizing only the one narrow, petty duty of their 
egotism, courtiers of all epochs have regarded as fools 
those who have devoted themselves to others, not to 
further their own interest, but for the advantage of 
those others. 

In fact, the furtherance of one's own interest alone 
excuses an interest in the affairs of others ; such is the 
precise teaching of their code. According to this 
pagan wisdom, all beyond interest is immoral, excess- 
ive, and opposed to the philosophic notion of liberty 
which gives each man absolute right over himself and 
nothing more, and which, from the stand-point of self- 
interest, charges with extravagance the superior idea 
of charity. 

To these, as well as to the " practical minds " of 
our ingenious epoch, Malagrida seemed, indeed, a fool, 
and God grant us this folly. 



PombaL 203 

May God keep from us the grand reason of the 
mathematicians who can calculate algebraically, almost 
to a hair's breadth, the distance which separates their 
spectacles from the sun, but who, on the contrary, 
know not how to resolve the childish equation of the 
few sad hours of our human life as compared with an 
incommensurable eternity ! 

From his earliest years Malagrida had been a " fool." 
Adventurer of the Faith, he had traversed the countries 
which others seek in quest of fortune, and in the 
delirious atmosphere of the gold regions had become 
infected only with the fever of charity. 

Forty years ! How many fortune-seekers, think you, 
spend the space of forty years in coaxing from mother 
Earth her golden favor ? 

Malagrida had heaped up a treasure of thousands of 
souls, and still his sublime cupidity was unappeased. 
He had suffered all that a human creature could suffer ; 
hunted like a wild beast through the woods by the 
Calvinist preachers, fastened to the stake by savages, 
one hundred times he had intoned with a premature 
gladness the canticle of his death. 

He had performed miracles like Francis Xavier ; he 
had converted entire countries, and the odor of his 
sanctity had penetrated across the sea. His body was 
so covered with wounds that the men who were charged 
with the duty of removing his garments at his last 



204 The Jesuits. 

hour, were unable to count the scars of this valiant 
soldier of Jesus Christ. 

Ah ! we were wrong in finding fault with Voltaire ; 
he was right ; the saint was, indeed, a fool. Where 
would you find a single practical mind to deny it ? 

It was during the year 1749 tnat ne was recalled 
from the American Missions by his superiors, because 
the king, John V., asked to be attended by him during 
his last hours. 

Pombal, then a restless and ambitious man, without 
success, and devoured by an eager thirst for power, 
must have smiled with disdain at this phantasy of the 
aged king summoning the " fool " from so great a dis- 
tance. 

It is said that he was jealous of the " fool," and that 
then began his implacable hate. Could he, however, 
have replaced the " fool " beside the bed of death ? 

Pope Benedict XIV. said, in speaking of the de- 
ceased king and his "fool": "Happy king to be 
sustained in his last step by the hand of an apostle." 

Malagrida returned to the desert just as the action 
of Joseph Emmanuel placed Pombal in power. 

This atrocious Minister had already been in office 
some years, when the queen, wife of John, manifested 
also a desire to die sustained and encouraged by the 
" fool." 

Joseph gave the order to recall Malagrida — a pro- 
ceeding which rendered Pombal uneasy, for the war 



PombaL 205 

against the Jesuits had already been begun in the 
colonies, and he feared the testimony of the apostle 
against him. 

He strongly opposed his return, but his intentions 
were frustrated, and the ruin of the saintly old man 
was sworn. 

It is a fact recorded by several historians that on 
many occasions, when his intrepid zeal had brought 
him face to face with death, Gabriel Malagrida, who 
was accustomed to speak of things with the assurance 
of a prophet, said : " God has promised me that I 
shall not fall under the blows of the infidels. I shall 
enjoy the supreme happiness of the supreme ignominy. 
I shall end in a Christian country in the midst of 
Christians who will applaud my sentence. " 

Pombal was aware of this prophecy. One day, 
when conversing with Paul Mendoza Carvalho, his 
brother, and Minister of his spoliations in Maragnon, 
he said laughingly, " The reverend Father shall have 
what he wishes." 

And so began that dark work, the masterpiece 
of a demon, that long, patient, and truly infernal 
effort, thanks to which one reputed a saint through- 
out Christendom ; the noble defender and heroic prop- 
agator of the Faith ; a prophet, honored after his 
death by the veneration of the head of the Church ; 
one endowed with the most precious gifts of Heaven, 
should be transformed into a despicable and shame- 



2o6 The Jesuits. 

fully fallen creature — no longer worthy to bind and 
loose souls, a heretic, a regicide, an impostor, a cor- 
rupter of men ; in short, a vile and impious tool, used 
to spread abroad brutal illusions and idiotic phantasies 
which suggest the Spirit of Darkness. 

I have said it was the masterpiece of a demon. It 
was the masterpiece of Pombal. 

Against the evidence of all sense, Malagrida was 
implicated in the Tavora accusation. It was merely a 
pretext for closing upon him the door of a dungeon. 

The detail of the cruelties which were perpetrated 
upon him, as he lay confined twenty feet below the 
light of day, matters little. For two years the un- 
fortunate old man is the property, the thing of Pom- 
bal, more skilled than the savages in devising torture. 

Did he, in truth, lose his reason under the weight of 
his atrocious torments ? 

Do they enact in this perpetual night, akin to that 
of hell, the farce of apparitions, phantoms of diaboli- 
cal voices speaking from the depths of darkness ? Do 
they sound those awful calls, inhuman awakenings of 
the captive for a time relieved from misery by nature, 
and of which the jailor of the son of Louis XVI. in 
the Temple, turned to account, it is said, the awful 
secret ? 

Do they affect, in a word, this great and lofty mind, 
which had held converse so long with God ? 

And does God permit, for his greater glory, this ter- 



PombaL 207 

rible torture to be prolonged to such a degree that 
His servant, under the stroke of insanity, writes, he 
who lay dying in such complete darkness, writes, with 
his paralyzed ringers, without paper or ink, two huge 
volumes which give the lie direct to his faith, his life, 
his death — in a word, to himself! 

The mind refuses to believe it. 

And where are the books : " The Reign of Anti- 
Christ," and " The Life of the blessed Saint Anne, dic- 
tated by Jesus and His holy mother" ? No one has 
ever seen them. 

We only know the titles, and some wildly extrava- 
gant extracts. 

Do you not scent Pombal ? Which is easier to an 
honest conscience : to believe that two great volumes 
of blasphemy, not in existence, are the works of a 
saint, or to believe the extracts fabricated by the fabri- 
cator of so many falsehoods, and who pushed his au- 
dacity one time to the extent of fabricating a false 
brief of Clement XIII. ? 

Moreover, the extracts were written by a master- 
hand. Some literary talent must have been possessed 
by one who merited comparison with Cardinal de Riche- 
lieu, founder of the French Academy. They con- 
tained superbly - expressed idiotism and immorality. 
The former degenerated into folly (spiritualism was not 
yet invented), the latter into utter indecency. Through- 
out Portugal, a contemptuous laugh was raised at 



208 The Jesuits. 

the expense of the Jesuit whom all Portugal had al- 
most adored. No one here expressed the insulting 
pity of M. de Choiseul and the " Encyclopedic," and 
when Pombal referred the parcel of clumsy blas- 
phemies to the Inquisition, all Lisbon applauded. 

The only drawback was, "that the tribunal of the In- 
quisition refused to judge in the matter, because it saw 
clearly through the fraud. One of the king's brothers 
was Grand Inquisitor. 

Think you Pombal' s course was arrested? No, he 
is more powerful than the brother of the king, whom 
he holds fast in his grip. He deposes the noble In- 
quisitor, and names in his place who? — Paul Men- 
doza Carvalho, his worthy brother. But it was neces- 
sary that the chief of the Inquisition should be created 
by the Holy See. This proves no obstacle ; Pombal 
makes himself Pope in order to confer the office, and 
all goes smoothly. 

Was I not right in terming the whole a master- 
piece ? 

" First strangled, then burnt by the hand of the 
executioner, so that no grave may receive his ashes." 
Thus ordered the decree of the Inquisitors ! Do you 
recognize the emphasis of Pombal — " The tomb," 
" The ashes " ? He certainly possessed talent ! 

On the evening of the 21st of September, in pres- 
ence of all Lisbon solemnly convoked to attend, 
the aged, illustrious, and holy apostle of the Faith, 



PombaL 209 

with his hands tightly bound, a gag in his mouth, 
and surrounded by the hideous and burlesque figures 
of demons, an idea Pombal, " rather too much inclined 
toward the liberal ideas of his age," had revived from 
the annals of the Inquisition, the better to provoke 
hisses and insults ; in a word, surrounded by the ap- 
paratus of the bloody comedies of a former age, ex- 
humed by a philosopher, Gabriel Malagrida, appeared 
upon the scaffold. 

How? With disheveled hair, wandering gaze, the 
mien of a man laboring under mental aberration, with 
the appearance of .a mind odious enough even in deg- 
radation to have written " The Reign of Anti-Christ" ? 

Far from it ! The narratives are many in number, 
and all agree in testifying the venerable serenity of the 
condemned. He had the modest and joyful air of one 
who consummates the sacrifice which was the complete 
realization of his prophecy, or rather of his passionate 
desire. At the moment of dying he made an effort to 
bless the throng, and his face shone with a radiance so 
luminous that the word " miracle " passed from mouth 
to mouth among the people, who were moved by a 
religious awe. 

His last word in quitting the prison had been 
(Jesuit) to pardon his assassin. 

Clement XIII., upon hearing the recital of his death, 
said : " This is a martyr at the feet of Jesus Christ." 

Voltaire, who was neither a " fool," nor cut off by 
14 



2ic The Jesuits. 

strangling, is not credited with having experienced this 
supernatural calm during his last hours. 

And Pombal ! Pombal imprisoned the people who 
dared to murmur the word miracle, and remained ab- 
solute master of Lisbon, which the Queen of France 
justly termed " The city of prison-hells." 

Some years later, on the 24th of February, 1777, 
the unfortunate King Joseph expired, and immediately 
a clamor of reprobation arose against his Minister. 

I draw no conclusion from this fact ; clamors, to my 
mind, prove nothing. 

Pombal was obliged to flee, and the prisons were 
opened, rendering up the unfortunate from those dun- 
geons, where so many had languished in agony. The 
queen, Dona Maria, did not revenge upon Pombal the 
oppression she had sustained from him. She willed, 
only for the sake of justice, that the political proceed- 
ings should be reversed. The greater part were can- 
celed, among others the decree Aveiro-Tavora-Mal- 
agrida. 

In consequence of this tardy and ineffective justice, 
Pombal, condemned to numerous restitutions, and pro- 
claimed " criminal " by the mouth of the queen, who 
unquestionably showed great clemency upon this occa- 
sion, went to die in exile at the chateau of his name. 
Notwithstanding the urgings of his son, he refused the 
last sacraments. 

This man, undoubtedly gifted with remarkable fac- 



Pombal. 211 

ulties, who had lived in such power and died in such ob- 
scurity, had aroused much hatred, beside his political 
animosities, and especially in his native town. On one 
hand, the inhabitants of the little city of Pombal were 
opposed to the idea of his body being interred in their 
church ; on the other, the Marquis of V'illanova, Min- 
ister of State, would not permit the mortal remains of 
his predecessor to be transported to Lisbon, where a 
gorgeous tomb, raised by Pombal himself in the time 
of his grandeur, awaited them. 

The body was simply inclosed in a coffin, draped 
with a mortuary cloth, and deposed in the Convent of 
the Franciscans at Pombal. 

The working of events moves but slowly in Portugal, 
as the statue in the square of Lisbon bears testimony, 
which still shows the Minister of Joseph Emmanuel at 
the feet of his master,* after so many and glaring 
condemnations. The coffin of Pombal remained fifty 
years above the earth literally without burial. 

We relate here a curious fact, apropos of which, 
however, we pronounce no eulogy, because it is easy 
enough to pardon the dead. What was sublime, was 
the prayer of the dying Malagrida for the triumphant 
Pombal. 

The following is the fact, which may, perhaps, seem 



* It is a bitter enough irony ; for the sake of truth, the 
group should be reversed. 



212 The Jesuits. 

curious: In 1829, the date of the official return of 
the Jesuits into Portugal, Father Delvaux was charged 
with the reinstallment, which took place with concur- 
rence alike of the Government and of the people. He 
set out from Lisbon with an ample escort, and began 
his journey through the diocese of Coimbra. But let 
us see his account : 

" Pombal," he relates in his official report, " is the 
first town in the diocese of Coimbra after leaving. Lis- 
bon. Now, the Archbishop had given orders to all 
the parishes on our route to receive us in triumph, 
and in consequence I was literally obliged to run 
away from the ovation in order to gain the convent 
of the Franciscans. (The reader will recollect that it 
was here the body of Pombal lay deposed). I ran 
thither, however ; it was a need of my heart ; I cele- 
brated mass ; I will not describe what I experienced 
in offering the victim of propitiation, the Lamb who 
prays on the cross for his executioners, in offering, I 
repeat, the holy sacrifice for the repose of the soul of 
Don Sebastian Carvalho, Marquis of Pombal, corpore 
j>rcesante. v * 

For fifty years his body had waited here the return 
of the Society from the exile to which his unrelenting 
cruelty had condemned them, and whose return, more- 
over, he had himself predicted. 



* In presence of the body. 



PombaL 213 

Whilst I was discharging this religious duty, the 
triumph which we were forced to accept, or rather 
endure, was in progress throughout the city and its en- 
virons. All the bells were rung. 

The Prior Archpriest came in solemn procession to 
conduct our Fathers to the church, which was illumi- 
nated. The whole was like a dream. If only the 
pitiful remains of the once potent Minister could have 
spoken. 

I repeat, that to my mind, sublimity of soul was 
here easily attained ; but I can also add, that in fol- 
lowing the history of this Order, so proverbially vin- 
dictive, according to the literature which cuts it up in 
order to sell the pieces to the voraciously morbid 
appetite of its readers, I have found only this decided 
instance of the " Vengeance of the Jesuits." 



VI 



A BRIEF GLANCE AT CHOISEUL, 
D'ARANDA, AND TANUCCI. 



I have given considerable relative importance to 
the drama of Lisbon, because the " great Marquis," 
if not the most redoubtable, was, at least, the most 
celebrated among the political enemies of the Order 
of Jesus, even as Pascal personified, in the community 
of readers, the type of the enemy of the Jesuits in 
polemics. 

I am certainly far from comparing all the statesmen 
who have shown enmity to the Order, to Don Sebas- 
tian de Carvalho, " the killer of the Fathers," and 
still less disposed to honor the many libellists who 
have calumniated the Order, by exalting their medi- 
ocrity to the height of the genius of Pascal ; but it is 
certain that, in these two men, so widely different, is 
personified the persecuting hate humbly implored from 
God, and obtained by Saint Ignatius, from the founda- 
tion of the Order. Nor can I determine which of 
these two men gained to the Institution the more good, 
or the more evil, since that may not be called abso- 
lutely bad which is the very essence of a work, and 
the special grace attached to its creation. 
(214) 



Choiseul, UAranda, and Tanucci. 215 

However, from a serious consideration of facts, it 
appears that the furious attack of Pombal, which 
opened the breach to all the other attacks, and visibly 
decided the nature of the battle, was a mere isolated 
blow, and that the Minister of a little country ignored 
at the time the tactics of the great Protestant League, 
which held in its snare all the kings, and also the 
rash plan of the Princes of the House of Bourbon, 
united in a family pact for the purpose of imprudently 
throwing off what they termed the " Yoke of the 
Church." 

The fault was not entirely due to them ; an irresist- 
ible movement swept them along. It is necessary to 
take into consideration their constitutional short-sight- 
edness, which never permitted them to see three steps 
before them ; their courts, swarming hives of noble 
bees ; their Parliaments, clothed with false gravity 
and dyed in the Jansenist vat ; and their Ministers, 
wholly or half philosophers, who, while eagerly pursu- 
ing chimerical advantages, rushed into the reality of 
their ruin. 

It is certa'nly a remarkable thing to observe how 
unanimous were these unfortunate kings in choosing, 
for men in whom to repose confidence, creatures de- 
voured by ambition, without either principle or faith — 
Choiseul, Alba, Aranda, Tanucci, and du Tillot ; four 
examples of the same infidelity. And equally strange 
is the unanimity of these pretended " Free Thinkers" 



216 The Jesuits. 

in working toward their own fall with an activity, an 
eagerness, and a passion truly worthy of pity ! 

But can not this be said, with equal reason, of the 
Protestants themselves ? and, excepting some few who 
were possessed of the perception and the malice of 
the demon, can we not place in the ranks of these 
blinded ones the entire band of philosophers, nay, 
even the more than philosophers, the very demoKshers, 
by profession and by trade, who became, in reality, 
frantic devotees of privilege as soon as they possessed 
therein a greater or lesser part ? 

Fancy we, for example, the womanish terror and 
horrible disgust that would have seized Voltaire could 
he have seen, were it only in a dream, the bloody, 
hirsute arms of his daughter, the Revolution ! 

No ; none among these men had fathomed the 
people. 

All played on their poor game of polished indolence 
or unrestful covetousness, emulating each other in 
elbowing aside the things which restrained them, 
which ruled them, which maintained them in the right 
and detested road, indifferent to God, or mocking 
Him, or hating Him ; all ignorant, even the learned ; 
all tainted with the leprosy of the egotism of this age, 
which lightly accepted the end of the world, provided 
the end of the world but came not until the to-morrow 
of its death ; all singing, jeering, railing, blaspheming, 
doubting, or pretending to doubt, in order to appear 



Choiseul, D'Aranda, and Tanucci. 217 

consistent ; respecting nothing, not even their moth- 
ers, and that, perhaps, not without reason, so aban- 
doned had woman become, and so low had marriage, 
which is the human sanctity of woman, fallen ! 

Never has there been seen a time so utterly void of 
God's influence ; never an hour so manifestly marked 
by the seal of agony and final impenitence. 

I have regretted, in my own mind, the lack of com- 
petency to treat, as it should be treated, the question 
of whether the Jesuits, and above them, the Church, 
could at this time have acted otherwise than they did, 
and better combated the evil? But to what pur- 
pose ? The hand of Providence is here in a special 
manner visible. The close of this epoch resembles 
an old age without dignity, broken down by its vices, 
and infirm to the point of repugnance, suddenly seized 
by a convulsion. It gives forth a final cry, then is 
silent, and stirs no more. It has lived. 

Now listen to what say the professors invested with 
the requisite authority to entitle them to compile u Dic- 
tionaries" for the instruction of youth. They say 
that this dead beast called itself "the Old World." 
And they show, I know not what, born at the same 
moment of its death, known as " the New World." 

This is very good as a metaphor ; but do not be de- 
luded and awed by the bombast of these high-sounding 
phrases, whose sense could be contained in the hol- 
lowed-out head of a pin. Let the garrulous who hope 



218 The Jesuits. 

to convince by the sonorous sound of their words, talk 
on. They do less harm than people imagine, for with- 
out them there would be exactly the same number of 
obtuse intelligences, and common fools imagining 
themselves learned. 

Let these empty talkers beat their drums and listen 
to the sound of their own noise. 

Nothing is dead ; nothing has been born. The Old 
World is only the world, as is the New. Both are of 
the same age, and these interments and these bap- 
tisms of worlds are but so much material to assist 
these phrase-sounders. 

There was one birth of time in Adam, one baptism 
of time in Christ, and between them a deluge which 
will never return. 

At best, the great age of the world subjects it to 
crises which are unavoidable, and to which only one 
remedy is applicable — faith. 

Behold the truth ; we are very old. This is the 
question : 

Has the Revolution revived the faith ? Perhaps. 
Then be the Revolution blessed, even amid its pro- 
found shame ! 

Has the Revolution lessened faith ? Then be it 
accursed, even amid its incontestable grandeur ! 

But I do not credit the decrease of faith, and the 
progress of faith is proved to me by evidence : 

God is more with us, unfortunate and humbled as 



Ckoiseul, D'Aranda, and Tanucci. 219 

we are, than He was among our more fortunate 
fathers ; God among us is more skillfully attacked, 
and better defended ; since it is necessary to employ 
these imperfect expressions to designate the undying 
eternal battle of Doubt against Faith — that grand con- 
flict of the two standards which the ecstasy of Ignatius 
viewed on the mystical plain. 

God draws us to Him. Our lethargy has passed, 
startled as much by His anger as by His mercy. God 
works great and hidden things within us — He who gives 
children to fill with joy the desolate mansion of the 
sterile. 

It is the seed-time, and the Father of the family is 
at work. As ever, a portion of the seed sown by 
Him falls by the wayside, and is devoured by the 
birds ; a portion on the stones, and becomes the prey 
of the parched earth • a portion among thorns, which 
choke the young shoot ; and finally, a portion on the 
good earth, which recompenses all losses, and yields 
grain an hundredfold to the sower. 

But in the good earth, even, behold how the enemy 
unhappily steals in and traitorously sows tares above 
the wheat ! 

O God ! how difficult to bring the seed to fruit ! 

If the germ of your word escape the voracious 
birds, our vices multiply like the sparrows of the way- 
side ; if it survive the noonday heat, it is burned by 
our passions; if it elude even the thorns, those tangles 



220 The Jesuits. 

of human interest, covetousness, ambition, and pride, 
it is not even yet safe, for the enemy who never sleeps, 
seeks at night to over-sow it with tares ; that useless, 
and therefore noxious plant, of which the stalk is 
straight, and the flower radiant and beautiful, but 
which affords nourishment to neither man nor beast ; 
true symbol of error adorned with false freedom, and 
heresy concealing its old leprosy under the seducing 
colors of novelty. 

O God ! how will it ever ripen into the wheat of 
your word ? 

It will ripen, however; it has ripened, despite the 
pillaging sparrows, the dryness, and the tangles, which 
are the war of nature ; despite even the tares which 
are the war of wicked men. It has ripened, and will 
ripen, because your mercy, saving Jesus, perpetually 
opposes virtue to nature, and the caution of super- 
natural devotion to the wiles of the enemy who in- 
cites to revolt the things of nature against the Master 
of Nature. 

The frail stalk and the wheat which bends it have a 
providential prop ; until the end of time, education 
will cherish the wheat, preaching will weed the field, 
and the harvest, though unceasingly impoverished, will 
be always plentiful. 

Since the day when the chief workman, employed 
by the nocturnal sower, placed in our French earth 
such an abundance of tares that the harvest was for a 



Choiseul, D'Aranda, and Tanucci. 221 

time choked, and the famished world was afflicted with 
a falling sickness, believe you that the tares have yet 
retained the enormous place in the field which was 
given them by the traitor ? 

No ! the tares have disappeared, and by this I un- 
derstand the special tares sowed by M. de Choiseul 
and his colleagues, the Jansenist tares — which is so 
utterly dead that we have no longer a market of tares; 
it has disappeared completely, this noxious invading 
herb, once so flourishing, which infested the nobility, 
the clergy, the Parliament, the Bourgeois class, and 
the Government alike ; so thoroughly has it been rooted 
out, that the youth who study the " Dictionnaires," 
seek ' vainly its definition in the " Dictionaries of 
youth." 

The candidates for degrees rebel when they are 
served so mischievous a turn as to be questioned on 
such antiquated subjects. 

Who has ever seen a live Jansenist ? There may 
still remain one in the museums, but it must command 
an immense price, and collectors only who have been 
happy enough to exhume from its tertiary the breast- 
bone of an Epiornis, or the first teeth of a Mega- 
therium, can hope to procure in exchange so great a 
curiosity. 

It was the thing, however, of which one revolving 
century has sufficed to destroy the last trace ; it was 
tares of these lost species whose growth endured long 



222 The Jesuits. 

enough to impair the harvest of intelligence, and 
produce a long and mortal famine in human hearts. 

Blind and odious instruments of Protestantism, 
which itself pursued with closed eyes an unknown 
route, the Jansenists, enemies of the Protestants, and 
of the Philosophers, renewed the coalition of the 
Pharisees and Sadducees of which the Gospel speaks, 
for a united attack upon the Society of Jesus, the ob- 
ject of their implacable jealousy. 

They surrounded the throne they infested the 
Parliaments, they governed the Ministry, and their 
austerity did not prevent them from being perfectly 
acquainted with the geography of that Armidian isle 
where Pompadour, the middle-aged enchantress, misled 
the premature decrepitude of the king. A league was 
formed between this unfortunate woman (whose name 
we have too often repeated), the directing Minister, 
the Parliaments, and the Jansenists, among whom a 
man of severe virtue, Francis de Fitz-James, Bishop 
of Soissons, was the first to* demand the suppression 
of the Order, even while making this, to say the least, 
strange reservation : " We willingly render them the 
justice of admitting that there is not a single Order 
in Europe whose Religious are more regular and aus- 
tere in their manners." 

Pascal, at least, would have reviled them. 

But let us turn to the Protestants : Schlosser first, 
Professor of History at the University of Heidelberg : 



Ckoiseul, UAranda, and Tanucci. 223 

"The diverse courts of the House of Bourbon," he 
says, "not seeing that they would place instruction in 
widely different hands (from those who had hitherto 
formed the minds of the young generation), united 
themselves against the Jesuits." * 

"This blindness of royalty was patent to the 
Philosophers, and afforded them hearty amusement. 
' D'Alembert uttered real cries of joy,' " Schlosser 
adds, speaking of the Jansenists. "They had de- 
prived the Jesuits, by means which were often equivo- 
cal, of the acquired esteem of centuries."t 

And Schoell : " The Jansenists, under the appear- 
ance of great religious zeal, and the Philosophers, 
while declaiming the most philanthropic sentiments, 
worked steadily toward the reversal of Pontifical au- 
thority. But, in order to set aside the ecclesiastical 
power, it was necessary to isolate it by depriving it 
of the support of this phalanx which had devoted itself 
to the defense of the Pontifical Throne." 

The literal truth of history is contained in these 
avowais. Some lines further on, Schoell continues : 
" The imprudences committed by some of the mem- 
bers furnished the arms with which to combat the 
Order, and the war against the Jesuits became popu- 
lar ; or rather, the persecution of an Order whose ex- 



* Schlosser, Vol. I. 

f History of Courts, Vol. XLIV. 



224 The Jesuits. 

istence was incorporated with that of the Catholic 
religion and the throne, became a title which gave it 
the right to call oneself philosopher." 

The style is Teutonic, but says much. 

''They held in their hands the future generations. 
Nothing hostile to the Holy See, and consequently to 
religion, could prosper as long as the Jesuits were 
there." . . . . " The Jesuits were immovable in their 

faith They conspired against them and declared 

them guilty, since they refused to be associated in the 
plots which menaced the Holy See a.nd the Mon- 
archies." 

Marvelous to relate, the Monarchies themselves 
joined against them, conspiring against their most firm 
defenders. 

" Quos vult perdere " . . . . the poet has said, 
speaking of the time of Jupiter. God first deprives 
of sense those whom His providence has condemned. 

The kings began the work of their slow suicide. 

In the midst of the gloomy tidings which daily 
arrived from Portugal, whetting the curiosity of the 
public, diverting the ennui of court, inspiring the idea 
of emulation within the breast of the Parliaments, 
and suggesting to M. de Choiseul a way of arriving at 
the proposed ends without having to wade toward 
it through blood, the affair of Father de Lavalette 
occurred, which, very simple in the beginning, assum- 
ed most aggravated proportions, by a sudden change 



Choiseul, D'Aranda, and Tanucci. 225 

of circumstances, which the Order was certainly power- 
less to prevent, but to which no energetic remedy was 
applied. Father de Lavalette was decidedly culpa- 
ble, if not as a man, certainly as a Religious. To parry 
losses which had been incurred, not amid the hazards 
of a loyal war, but through a manifest crime against 
the right of mankind, which has been added to the al- 
ready long list of like misdeeds which History lays at 
the door of England,* Father de Lavalette trans- 
gressed at first by little, then still further, the limits 
imposed by the Rule. He became a trader ; he be- 
came even a speculator. 

Proof exists to show that Father Visconti, General 
of the Order, took from the first moment the most 
severe measures in his regard. The examiners ap- 
pointed to judge him, and provided with most extended 
powers, set out in good time, but if appeared as if 
everything had conspired to prevent their arrival — war, 
tempests, captivity, and death. 

When Father de la Marche, the fifth or sixth ex- 
aminer named, at length arrived in the Antilles with a 
safe conduct from the British Government, the affair 
had been in progress for seven years. 

Father de la Marche, assisted by the principal mem- 



* Some writers have maintained that the seizing of the 
vessels was a Protestant blow, but it was entirely an English 
affair, and the result of an old habit: "Fides anglica mercuri- 
alis fides ." 

15 



226 The Jesuits. 

bers of the Order resident in Martinico, rendered the 
celebrated judgment which condemned Lavalette to 
both spiritual and temporal interdiction. He acqui- 
esced in his sentence, expressly declaring that he acted 
entirely of himself, without either the authorization or 
counsel of his superiors. 

He reiterated this assertion in London, after his ex- 
pulsion from the Order, and always persevered in the 
statement throughout the numerous actions brought 
against him in the courts of law. 

Even the fact of the judgment rendered by Father 
de la Marche could not destroy the credit of what 
has been termed " the counting-houses of Father de 
Lavalette," although already imperilled. 

The operations engaged in remained, nevertheless, 
considerable, and the closing of the warehouses which 
depressed the values, thus greatly augmenting the debt, 
magnified the deficit into the proportions of a disaster. 

It was, however, merely a loss of money, which 
could be refunded in money. 

The first movement of the General was to pay in- 
discriminately all the creditors, although the Order 
was not responsible, either according to the Constitu- 
tions, or the ordinary jurisprudence, but the members 
of the French Bar counseled the Society to delay 
payment, and publish the bankruptcy of Father de 
Lavalette, ft in order to bring revindicatory action 
against the British Government. ,, 



Ckoiseul, D'Aranda^ and Tanuccu 227 

It is at this juncture that perfidy, far greater than 
that of the English themselves, appears ; for sev 
eral members of Parliament, having been sounded, 
warmly advocated this course. The trap was most 
invitingly arranged. Madame de Pompadour remained 
motionless ; M. de Choiseul feigned to be particularly 
occupied in another direction ; Philosophy remained 
concealed in order to laugh more heartily ; and Paris, 
engrossed with the decree by which one hundred and 
seventy captains had been discharged, chanted a 
badly-rhymed song which threatened the "Captain 
Jesus" in the name of the king, to overthrow Him 
like " His company." 

The king slumbered. 

One morning the parliamentary trap closed upon 
an imprudent shred of parchment which had been 
let fall, and immediately an extraordinary excitement 
became visible around the snare. With one accord, 
Madame de Pompadour, M. le Due, the Philosophers, 
the Jansenists, Parliament, the Court, and the city 
stretched their necks to see what had been taken. 

It was nothing, but it meant everything, and the 
king was very nearly awakened by the joyful rumor 
which circulated about his throne, " The cause of the 
Jesuits was in Parliament." 

Under pretense of judging the Lavalette case, Par- 
liament executed a plan, which it had been long con- 
cocting, and ordained that a copy of the Constitutions 



228 The Jesuits. 

of the Order be placed in the register's office. For 
the time the king was thoroughly awakened, but he 
was soon lulled to sleep again. 

" Madame de Pompadour aspired in a special man- 
ner to a reputation of energy, and believed that an oc- 
casion of gaining it had at last presented itself, by 
showing that she understood how to make a grand 
stroke of policy in State affairs. 

u The same littleness of mind also influenced the Due 
de Choiseul. Moreover, both were anxious to distract 
the public attention from the events of the war."* 

Thus says Sismondi, and it is not badly put for a 
Genevese, inasmuch as the events of the war, which 
was bravely fought on the battle-field by our Generals 
and soldiers, but directed at Paris with a deplorable 
lack of ability, were of a nature which could not be 
too speedily forgotten. 

I can not close the quotation without relating what 
Sismondi observes of the joint glory of the favorite and 
the Minister : u They hoped to acquire popularity by 
flattering at the same time the Philosophers and the 
Jansenists, and defray the expenses of the war by the 
confiscation of the goods of a very wealthy Order, etc., 
and thus dispense with the need of retrenchment, "t 

Do you prefer the worthy Lacretelle ? His text is 
the same, nearly identical : "The Duke de Choiseul," 



French History, Vol. XXIX. f Ibid. 



Choiseul, UAranda, and TanuccL 229 

he says in his History of France, during the eighteenth 
century, " and the Marquise de Pompadour fomented 
the hatred against the Jesuits. The Marquise, who 
had never justified her pretensions to energy of char- 
acter, was impatient to show, in destroying the Jesuits, 
that she knew how to make a telling stroke in State 
affairs. The Duke de Choiseul was no less jealous 
of the same honor. The goods of the monks would 
serve to defray the expenses of the war, and enable 
them to dispense with all recurrence to reform. To 
flatter at once two powerful parties, the Philosophers 
and Jansenists, was a great means of popularity." 

I trust that none will accuse me of serving to my 
readers a clerical " prose. 

Neither Sismondi, the Calvinist, nor Lacretelle, the 
avowed enemy of those whom, in order to better tes- 
tify his hatred, he terms " monks," are possessed of 
great eloquence, but it is impossible for two, either 
lofty or insignificant intellects, to coincide more exactly 
in the terms employed. As they were almost con- 
temporaries, I know not if it much matter which of 
the two has copied the other. 

But M. de Choiseul responds to both, one and the 
other, by a glaring falsehood. Louis XVI. did not 
love M. de Choiseul ; he had expressed once, at least, 
the aversion of an honest man and a Christian, in what 
may be called a terrible fashion, but it was not on ac- 
count of the Jesuits. 



230 The Jesuits. 

Long after the Lavalette trial, when Louis XVI. 
was king, M. de Choiseul appealed to him thus in his 
"Justificatory Memoir": "They represented to the 
king that I was the author of the expulsion of the 
Jesuits. Chance alone began this affair; the action 
of Spain terminated it At the close of an un- 
fortunate war, overwhelmed with affairs, I viewed only 
with indifference the subsistence or destruction of a 
community of monks." 

I have cited this ministerial text only to show that 
M. le Due, who, once fallen, remembered : "All bad 
business is deniable." 

"As soon as the Parliament had the ' Constitutions' 
in its hands, it no longer troubled itself about the 
creditors of Lavalette, who were never fully paid," 
says Cretineau-Joly, " not even after the confiscation 
of the goods of the Society.' ' 

And the same author adds in a note :'• 

" The house of Martinico, and the lands of Dom- 
inica, which were all the property of Lavalette, were 
purchased by the English conquerors at the price of 
four millions." 

Why did not Parliament show its disinterestedness 
in behalf of the creditors, the sum total of whose debt 
amounted to only two millions, four hundred thousand 
livres? 



*" History of the Society of Jesus," Vol. X., p. 204. 



Ckoiseul, UAranda, and Tanucci. 231 

It made a great stir in behalf of the creditors. 

Both Lacretelle and Sismondi are agreed in saying 
that this was but a mere pretext ; it was necessary to 
please the Philosophers by trying to crush the Church, 
to please the Jansenist Athenians by exiling Aristides, 
and " to pay the expenses of the war." 

The king moved at length almost at the conclusion 
of the affair. He referred the case to his council. 
The council of the king gave advice favorable to the 
Jesuits, and the Bishops of France, united on its ques- 
tion, unanimously responded (lacking only six Jan- 
senist voices) by a magnificent eulogium of the Insti- 
tute. 

But the king could not remain awake for any length 
of time ; as soon as he had closed his eyes once 
more, Madame de Pompadour made a sign to 
Choiseul, who in turn notified Parliament, and on the 
1st of April, 1762, all the Jesuit colleges were closed. 

How gayly d'Alembert announces the fact : "They 
received at the end of March the sad news of the 
taking of this colony (Martinico.) "* 

They thought to effect a diversion, by engaging the 
attention of France on another subject, as of old 
Alcibiades had thought to cut the tail of his dog, etc., 
etc. 

He becomes a prophet in his joy, and exclaims : " I 



D'Alembert, " Suppression of the Jesuits," p. 168. 



232 The Jesuits. 

see everything, couleur de rose ! I see all the Jan- 
senists dying a beautiful death next year, after having 
caused the Jesuits to perish by a violent death this 
year." 

The Jansenists are dead in truth, and forever — and 
the Jesuits live. 

More remains to be told, however. The voice of 
the clergy of France penetrated even to the foot of 
the throne. u Sire, religion recommends to you its 
defenders, the Church its ministers, Christian souls, 
the depositories of the s.ecrets of their consciences ; a 
great number of your subjects, the masters who have 
educated them ; the youth of your kingdom, those 
who form their minds and hearts." 

This last clause contained the knotty point of the 
question, and the Archbishop of Narbonne, charged 
with the presentation of the "vote of the clergy "* to 
the king, represented its importance. 

The Dauphin, on his side, possessed of keen intel- 
ligence and a noble heart, neglected nothing in order 
to make the king comprehend the terrible danger of 
leaving to chance, at so menacing a period, the edu- 
cation of youth. It must be granted, that the danger 
was from that time forth appreciated by all the world ; 
only while it was a subject of fear for the friends of 



* Vote of the clergy of France. 



Ckoiseul, D'Aranda, and Tanucci. 233 

the throne, it raised the hopes of the conspirators en- 
listed in the cabal against it, and of the still more 
numerous, wild, reckless beings whose curiosity led 
them, with bandaged eyes, to the discovery of abysses 
toward which civilization was hurrying. 

As yet, the Revolution had no name, but each felt it 
drawing near, and each felt that in the attack upon the 
Jesuits had been swept away the most solid of the last 
barriers raised across the declivity on which the world 
was slipping. To expel the Jesuits was to plunge 
young generations into a chaos of aspirations, of 
doubts, falsehoods, undisciplined science, ambitions, 
treasons, egotisms, impieties, with which they became 
imbued, under the name of "new ideas," to fill 
them with the obstinacy of caste, the prejudice of 
sect, and the passion of privilege peculiar to certain 
bodies, such as the Parliaments and the Universities. 

The day will come when history, well written, and 
free from the declamatory twaddle which overloads it 
and obscures its meaning, will establish clearly the 
truth of this axiom : 

That the Revolution, at its birth, was nothing more 
than a fever of caste, a conspiracy of sect, and a revolt 
of privilege, in which the people were not at all inter- 
ested, because its great instinct, not yet empoisoned, 
saw in it only the interest of castes, of sects, and of 
prerogative, excited by the representations of sophistry. 

There was no need of the Revolution in order to 



234 The Jesuits. 

further the measure of progress where progress is only 
possible according to Divine permission. 

Beyond this allotted measure all progress is a false- 
hood and an irony, as may be plainly seen by the peri- 
odical and constant recoils of the Revolution, which 
ever exists, and which, perhaps, will never end. Those 
who live long, nearly all acquire the certainty that in- 
telligent revolutioifists do not believe in the Revolu- 
tion. 

We should be more advanced in that vague path 
which they call progress, and which is least marked by 
splendid monuments, either in point of view of ma- 
terial conquest or purely physical science, if the revo- 
lutionists did not take the trouble to pause, from 
time to time, to assassinate Louis XVI., or to play 
some other highly insensate tragedy in order to fill up 
the inevitable reaction attendant upon proclaiming 
from the housetops that they are the ignorant evil, the 
ferocious evil, and the incurably blind evil, before 
which everything must give way. 

The most convincing argument against the revolu- 
tionists, more telling even than the history of their 
political abortions, which will long be the surprise of 
posterity, is this : What have they discovered in phi- 
losophy, leaving aside the negation of God ? Voltaire 
believed in God. He has said so time and again, 
both in brilliant prose and pitiful verse. It is melan- 
choly to see Voltaire among them, or even Diderot, 



Choiseul, LPAranda, and Tanucci. 235 

who has showed himself in certain passages to be a 
man of genius. Both of these were thoroughly French 
in mind, although naturalized Prussians in heart. Vol- 
taire, especially, was guilty of the wrong of despising 
and detesting the French people, and allowed them to 
see it with a cynical effrontery, because, mighty genius 
as he was, and perhaps for that very reason, he was 
the exact opposite of a great prince. Under the quasi- 
royal mantle which the easily-understood infatuation 
of his contemporaries draped upon his shoulders, the 
parvenu thrusts itself into view. 

And it is a ludicrous thing to say, but behold, 
why the Church proved so obnoxious to him : they had 
raised him a mimic throne, and, in his simplicity, he 
wished a true Altar ; and God eclipsed him by taking 
up too much space thereon. 

Voltaire, in killing God, hoped to inherit His 
throne. Others since Voltaire, and with less excuse 
than he, have attempted this at once sorrowful and 
ludicrous work, which is the imbecility of genius. 

But among all, even including Voltaire, living by the 
eloquence of their hates, what have they found ? In 
the place of the mocked God, what have they put ? 

Steam is magnificent ; the electric telegraph a per- 
petual marvel; there are fairy-like wonders in the dark 
box where the light works to produce photographs of 
the smallest thing. 

But all this is from God, 



236 The Jesuits. 

Where is the essentially human invention ? I re- 
peat it, where is the philosophical idea brought by the 
revolutionists? Nowhere! In this regard, they are 
more poorly off than the most pitiful of the heresies, 
whose carcasses lie rotting in the ditch all along the 
grand route of Catholicism. 

There were heresies which endured for centuries ; 
there are some which, unhappily for the world, still 
exist ; but these devotees of matter, these seekers of 
a binomial which will replace God in their empty 
Church, and liberty in their slavish Republic ! no- 
where ! nowhere ! 

Nowhere ! Those who have attained the age of fifty 
years have seen their startling or laughable Utopian 
schemes twisted into a thousand, which are shame- 
lessly proclaimed in the obscenity of their silliness, 
in order to gain the attention of mankind ; loudly 
advertising, posting their placards, waving their stand- 
ards, illuminating their booths like those of a char- 
latan at a fair, only to disappear, drowned in the 
flood of some new foolery which rises. 

What is at the bottom of all this? The shop. The 
shop of men who, refusing all belief in the disinter- 
estedness of the veritable apostolate, constitute them- 
selves the apostles of all kinds of nonsense, in order 
to gain reputation, influence, or money ; the miniature 
shop of Voltaire ; also, the shop of caste, of sect, of 
privilege ; the shop, alas ! of the Court of France in 



Ckoiseul, UAranda, and Tanucci. 237 

the eighteenth century, of Protestants, of Jansenists, 
and the shop of Parliaments ! 

Must it be understood, then, that to combat this in- 
vasion of Bourgeois charlatanism, which, hardly born, 
was already so powerful, there was only the effort of 
the Society of Jesus ? Such is, most certainly, not 
the impression we wish to give. 

The Society of Jesus is only a battalion of the grand 
army of the Church, and the Church will be provi- 
dentially guarded in its integrity, independent of 
that Order, independent of all which is not essentially 
the Church ; but since we have been speaking of the 
army apropos of the Church, it is necessary to take 
note of the element of every army — the soldier. 

The army of the Church has numbered equally as 
good soldiers as the Society of Jesus has furnished 
them, but none better ; and their force was tenfold 
increased by the marvelous discipline to which the 
unanimity of their adversaries has constantly rendered 
homage. Through this discipline, which stationed 
them in the center of the Church, they were as the 
heart of the Church, and the enemies of the Church 
drawn up and collected for a supreme effort, rushed 
upon this heart. If the Church did not succumb, it 
was because she is immortal. 

Not only did the Church survive the shock, it was 
not even shaken ; but all which was not the Church, 



238 The Jesuits. 

but depended for its existence on her, although refus- 
ing to believe so, all tottered and fell ! 

The severest chastisement which could be inflicted, 
not only on the memory of M. de Choiseul, whose 
lavish partiality hung so heavy a weight on the con- 
science of Parliament, but on that of Parliament itself, 
is the publication in its integral parts of the Act which 
expelled the Jesuits, and the considerations of that 
Act. The comic genius of Moliere never conceived 
anything as ridiculous as this vocabulary of charges, 
an unrivaled monument of bad faitri. ignorance, and 
impotency. 

The Parliament was an illustrious body, and when 
we utter in their default the word " ignorance," it is 
not that we are unaware of the fact that it consulted 
the most eminent and upright jurists in France, or 
probably in Europe, but that besides the balance of 
votes being rendered unfair by the presence of a large 
number of young courtiers — the avowed creatures of 
Pompadour, whose pestilential influence everywhere 
penetrated — it is certain that the bolstered theology, 
improvised for the occasion in the half pagan sanctuary 
of Themis, was the occasion of great disorder, followed 
presently by the most unblushing of all pedantries. 

These young " time-servers," wicked creatures of An- 
toinette Poisson, disguised as Fathers of the Council, 
would convey to the mind only the idea of a carnival, 
were it not that the consequences proved so funereal. 



Choiseul, D'Aranda, and Tanucci. 239 

The 6th of August, 1762, Parliament, judging this 
cause in a single sitting, and neglecting almost entirely 
the main point of the case, rendered a judgment which 
even its delay impeaches as having been decided upon 
in advance, and which declares the Order known as 
the Society of Jesus inadmissible in all civilized States, 
as being opposed to natural right, to all spiritual and 
temporal authority, and tending to introduce into the 
Church, under the specious veil of a religious Institu- 
tion, not an Order whose aspirations are veritably and 
solely toward evangelical perfection, but a political 
body,* whose very essence consists of a constant 
activity in bringing about by every possible means a 
state of absolute independence, and consequently the 
usurpation of all authority. 

So far is only vague, and written in defiance of all 
sense, since the Order " opposed to all spiritual 
authority" was at the time defended by the infallible 
testimony of the Holy See, the Apostolic Council, and 
by the entire clergy of France, with the Bishops at their 
head. 

But the sequel will be better understood by employ- 
ing the precise terms of the Decree to show the crimes 



* At first they made use cf the word " secret," and the 
President, Roland, he who was later so unmercifully plun- 
dered by the Jansenist sharks (the famous " Boite a Perette "), 
compared them to the Freemasons, who had made some 
stir since the attempt of Damiens. 



240 The Jesuits. 

of which the Jesuits are accused : u Simony, blas- 
phemy, sacrilege, magic and sorcery, astrology, irre- 
ligion of all kinds, idolatry and superstition, lascivious- 
ness, .... theft, parricide, homicide, suicide, and 
regicide." 

This not only in practice, but in doctrine with the 
approbation of their Superiors and Generals. 

Where was the Bearnais, who understood so well 
how to deal with the hypocrisy of Parliament ? Had 
there been on the throne of France, I do not say a 
Henry IV., nor even the half, the quarter, but only 
the tenth, the hundredth part of a king, .... alas ! 
if there had been even Louis XV., without Choiseul 
or Pompadour ! 

The Jews, says the Evangelist, had great difficulty 
in procuring false witnesses to testify against our Lord. 
And it seems that Parliament found no more easily 
than they the sources by which their unparalleled judg- 
ment was gained; for the same President Roland, to 
whom we have alluded, when justly attacking the 
Jansenists for having disputed, amid their gloomy dis- 
sipation, the succession of his uncle, Rouilli des Fille- 
tieres, complained bitterly " of having expended more 
that sixty thousand livres of his own money in the 
affair of the Jesuits ; " and he candidly adds : 

" In truth, the labors that I have gone through in 
relation to the Jesuits, who would never have been 
'exterminated' (precious word) if I had not conse- 



Choiseul, D'Aranda, and Tanucci. 241 

crated to the purpose my time, my money, and my 
health, should not have been rewarded by a desertion 
of my uncle." 

• So much for the favor of the Jansenists ! A little 
further on, and this unfortunate President had reason 
to weep f the " Boite a Perette " did not show itself 
very gracious in his regard. 

How shameful and pitiable a comedy ! The Parlia- 
ment of a d'Agueseau, of Lamoignon, and of a Mole ! 
At last Pombal supplied himself with his authority, 
and did not dishonor the justice of his country. 

But let us peruse the considerations of this Choiseul 
Act ; it must be read in order to be believed. 

u Their doctrines in all times have been favorable 
to the schism of the Greeks ; opposed to the dogma 
of the Procession of the Holy Ghost ; of favoring 
Arianism, Socinianism, Sabellianism, and Nestorianism; 
of endeavoring to shake belief in the truth of other 
dogmas concerning the hierarchy, the rites of sacrifice 
and sacraments ; reversing the authority of the Church 
and Apostolic See ; of favoring the Lutherans, the 
Calvinists, and other innovators of the sixteenth cen- 
tury • of reviving the heresy of Wyckliffe, renewing 
the errors of Tichonius, of Pelagius, and of the semi- 
Pelagians, of Cassien, and of Fauste, along with that 
of the Marseillais ; of adding to heresy, blasphemies 
offensive to the Holy Fathers, to the Apostles, to 
Abraham, to the Prophets, to St John the Baptist, and 
16 



242 The Jesuits. 

to the Angels ; of being outrageous and blasphemous 
against the Blessed Virgin Mary ; of shaking the founda- 
tions of Christian Faith ; assailing the divinity of Jesus 
Christ, and attacking the mystery of the Redemption ; 
of favoring the impiety of the Deists ; entertaining 
Epicurism ; teaching men to live as beasts, and Chris- 
tians to live as Pagans ; offending the ears of the 
chaste ; nourishing concupiscence and conducing to 
temptation and toward grievous sins; eluding the 
divine law by artifice, pretended societies and other 
frauds of this kind; palliating usury; inducing judges 
to prevarication ; apt to accomplish their ends by 
diabolical artifice ; troubling the peace of families ; 
adding the art of deceiving to the iniquity of theft ; 
shaking the fidelity of domestics ; opening the way to 
the violation of all laws, civil, ecclesiastical, or apos- 
tolic ; injurious to sovereigns, and to governments ; 
making the life of mankind and their rule of manners so 
as to depend upon vain reasonings and systems ; ex- 
cusing vengeance and homicide ; justifying cruelty and 
personal vengeance ; opposed to the second Com- 
mandment of charity, and stifling even in fathers and 
children all sentiments of humanity — thus execrably 
acting in opposition to filial love ; opening the road to 
avarice and cruelty ; capable of procuring homicide 
and parricides to be committed ; openly opposed to 
the Decalogue ; justifying massacres ; menacing mag- 
istrates and human society with certain ruin; contrary 



Choiseul, U Aranda, and Tanucci. 243 

to the maxims of the Gospel, to the example of Jesus 
Christ, to the doctrine of the Apostles, the opinions of 
the Holy Fathers, and the decisions of the Church ; to 
the securityof the life and honor of princes, and their 
magistrates, and ministers ; to the peace of families, 
and the good order of civil society ; seditions opposed 
to all natural right, to divine right, to positive right, 
and the right of mankind; fomenting fanaticism and 
its horrible carnage ; a disturbing element in the society 
of men ; ever creating an ever-present peril to the life 
of kings ; holding doctrines whose venom is so dangerous 
that it can only be estimated by its sacrilegious effects, 
which can not be viewed without horror." Bah ! 

Never, assuredly, have even our daily journals, who 
seize so greedily upon every detail bearing on the 
Jesuits, served up to their readers such ludicrous ac- 
cusations as these. Nothing has been found to equal 
the absurdity of this decree save its infamy. 

But still greater than the infamy of the decree itself 
was the rigor with which it was executed. 

The king was saddened, and as deeply touched as 
it was possible for him to be. 

The Dauphin gazed into the sinister perspective of 
the future, and shortly afterward died. The accusa- 
tions directed against M. de Choiseul, by the con- 
science of the public, on the subject of his death, 
have never been proven; but Horace Walpole, in 
October of 1765, writes as follows : 



244 The Jesuits. 

" The -Dauphin has infallibly but a short time to 
live. The Philosophers are overjoyed." Lacretelle, 
on the contrary, describes the intense mourning of 
Paris. Philosophers and people alike both knew with 
what ardor the Dauphin worked toward the re-es- 
tablishment of the Jesuits, who were, in the full force 
of the term, popular, besides having in their favor the 
queen, Stanislaus of Poland, and the king himself, if 
he counted for anything. The king had written to M. 
de Choiseul : " All heresies have ever been detested 
by them." Choiseul knew enough of modern history 
to not be in ignorance of that fact, and certainly it was 
not a reason to make him love them any the better. 

Listen to a mighty voice, that of Lamenais, speak- 
ing from the distance of half a century (in 1820) : 
"They knew it," he says (the devotion of the Order 
to religion and humanity) ; " they knew it, and it was 
for them a reason to destroy it, as it is for us to pay 
it, at least, the tribute of regret and gratitude which 
it merits for the numerous benefits it has conferred. 
We will long feel the void made in Christianity by the 
suppression of these men, as eager for sacrifices as 
others in the pursuit of enjoyment, and we will have 
to work a long time to fill it. 

" Who has replaced them in our pulpits ? Who will 
replace them in our colleges ? Who in their stead 
has offered to carry Faith and Civilization and the 



Choiseul, D'Aranda, and Tanucci. 245 

love of the French name into the forests of America, 
or across the pathless wastes of Asia, watered so often 
with their blood ? They are accused of being ambi- 
tious ; no doubt they were ; what society of men is 
not? 

" But their ambition was to do good ; all the good 
in their power ; and who does not know that it is 
often that fault which the world will least pardon ? 

" They wished to rule everywhere ; and where did 
they rule if not in the regions of the New World, where, 
for the first and only time, they seemed to realize those 
chimeras of happiness which we pardon in the imag- 
ination of poets ? They were dangerous to monarchs ; 
is it well for Philosophy to make them this reproach ? 

" However it may be I have examined history, I 
have seen these accusations ; I have searched for proofs, 
and found only a clear justification of the Order." 

This extract, taken from the " Reflections on the 
State of the Church in the Eighteenth Century," was 
written a short time previous to the re-establishment 
of the Jesuits, who had returned, but without having 
received the sanction of the Christian government of 
the Bourbons. Under the Restoration the shadow of 
Choiseul still seemed to linger in ministerial places. 

Moreover, in the nick of time the doors of the Ad- 
ministration had been found sufficiently ajar to let 
that Bourgeois riot, which bore the name of the Revo- 
lution of 1830, effect an entrance. 



246 The Jesuits. 

But let us return to the close of the eighteenth cen- 
tury and cast a glance at Spain. Here we find that 
the baneful shadow of Choiseul has stretched across 
the Pyrenees. 

Nothing appeared to quench the thirst of hate which 
consumed the heart of this man ; and Sismondi, after 
expressing astonishment at the rapidity with which the 
persecution against the Jesuits spread from country to 
country, explains it by saying : 

" Choiseul made this persecution his own personal 
affair, and devoted himself to the one great object of 
expelling them from every State ruled by Bourbon 
power." 

The reason of this was, because Choiseul loved the 
Bourbons no better than he loved the Jesuits. 

He mined, he sapped the throne as well as the altar. 
But here he was defeated. His gnawing teeth could 
tear the gilded wood of the throne, but broke against 
the altar-stone. 

The throne needed the Jesuits, that is to say, edu- 
cation, for its support ; and though after the empoison- 
ing of only one generation which followed the expulsion 
of the Jesuits, the throne fell. 

The altar, which needed no human support, survived, 
rising miraculously from the midst of ruins. 

Choiseul, principal cause of the shameful excesses 
of his country, the man who by his weakness and 
inefficiency had provoked the anti-Catholic, that is, to 



Ckoiseuly D'Aranda, and TanuccL 247 

the anti-national rage; Choiseul, more noxious even 
than Voltaire, and more guilty, because he was at the 
same time more interested and more responsible, had 
exerted all his power; but " non prceveluit" his work 
hastened the unlooked-for disaster which terrified his 
last hour, but even then he saw the altar and the lamp 
of the altar suspended on high, reigning above the dis- 
aster, and giving glory to God, with the incense which 
rose fro 11 the death of the martyrs. 

Non praveluit : he has not ; non prcevalebunt : they 
shall not ! Nothing can prevail against the Church, 
which is the rock of Jesus Christ. 

In the strange Memoir of M. de Choiseul, which 
shows uneasiness, but no repentance, addressed during 
the following reign to Louis XVI., and of which we 
have already quoted some lines, he lays to the " action 
of Spain only, the suppression of the Company in 
France." 

Beside that the dates give the direct falsehood to 
puerile justification, so little worthy the dignity of a 
statesman, celebrated at least by the piles, of rubbish 
which he had heaped up along his route, and the 
many wounds which he had dealt his country,* the as- 



* The history of this Minister, such as it is related in the 
" Dictionaries" for the use of youth, is the masterpiece of 
its kind ; he is there represented as a well-educated man 
(which is false), gifted with talents (which is true), a friend 
of letters (he corresponded much with the stranger), an able 



248 The Jesuits. 

sertion of M. de Choiseul is sufficiently refuted by the 
facts themselves. Not only did not the " action of 
Spain " influence the conduct of the French Minister, 
but it is clearly demonstrated that the French Minister 
was, if not the author, at least the instigator of the 
" action of Spain." 

Charles III. in truth resembled neither Joseph 
Emmanuel nor Louis XV. ; he was a Christian king, 
and it may be remembered that far from being a sys- 
tematic enemy of the Jesuits, he had ordered the first 
pamphlets of Pombal against the Society to be burnt. 

To excite this just prince against the Order, even to 
the excess of the most furious persecution, a skillfully 
conducted intrigue was needed ; and to conduct this 
intrigue, it needed the character whom the amateurs 
of our popular theater call Ci The Traitor/' and who is 
as great a personification of evil, gifted with talent, as 
the Mephistopheles of Goethe. 

The traitor was at hand. 



administrator (after the fashion of the famous steward wh^ 
sold the chateau), and the youth are taught to believe that 
this noble Minister hunted the Jesuits, for having made the 
colonial fortune of England, served Austria without mili- 
tating against Prussia, enriched Pompadour, betrayed 
Canada, ceded Louisiana, as easily as. they do all things, 
with their hands in the pockets of their soutanes. It all lies 
in the art of lying moderately, but imprudently, with the ap- 
probation and privilege of the King of Prussia. 



Ckoiseuly UAranda, and Tanucci. 249 

The historical facts here assume such a coloring, 
that they can only be explained with the guarantee of 
impartiality by Protestant pens. 

The least phrase uttered by a writer friendly toward 
religion would be suspected. Let the recital be writ- 
ten from one end to the other, therefore, with Protest- 
ant ink. 

In the year 1766, three years after the action of 
France in regard to these." ci-devant 11 Jesuits, as Par- 
liament called them, already filled with the spirit of 
"'93," even to the point of using its very language, 
a riot took place in Madrid known as that of " The 
Sombreros," of which the apparently frivolous motive 
here matters but little, but which had its concealed ori- 
gin in Paris and Lisbon. The royal authority was for 
a time overthrown, and Charles was obliged to retreat 
to Aranjuez, protected with great difficulty by his 
Wallonian Guards. 

The disturbance, which neither the regiments of 
Flanders nor the guards sufficed to quell, was appeased 
by the Jesuits, who had become even more popular in 
Spain than they had been in France, as the public 
demonstrations testified. 

Unfortunately, the crowd insisted upon attending 
them even to the doors of their several houses, crying : 
" Vivent les Feres." 

Charles III. possessed some fine qualities, but he 
was arrogant, jealous, and vengeful as a Castilian. 



250 The Jesuits. 

He had been obliged to flee ; the Fathers had subdued 
the people who had risen against him. 

At the height of his indignation he received advices 
from Paris stating " that it was not difficult for the 
Jesuits to quell the riot which they had themselves 
excited." 

M. de Choiseul had long before insinuated himself 
into the good graces of Charles by conceding to his 
Ambassadors precedence over the Ambassadors of 
France. The dignity of his country counted as nothing 
with M. de Choiseul, who was as prodigal of her honor 
as of her finances. 

Soon after the affair of "The Sombreros," a Ministry 
friendly to the views of Choiseul (and looked upon 
favorably by the " Encyclopedie ") was instituted at 
Aranjuez. 

The chief of this cabinet was a most distinguished 
diplomat, Don Abarca de Bolea, Count d'Aranda, 
whom the Lutheran Schoell represents as transported by 
the praises which unbelieving Paris lavished upon him. 

His colleague, the Duke of Alba, was a veritable 
veteran of philosophy, and but little scrupulous in the 
choice of means when there was a question of striking 
at the Church ; for a second Protestant, Christopher de 
Murr,* clearly convicts him of forging the letters which 
he attributed to the Jesuits. 



* IXth Vol. of the Journal, p. 222. 



Ckoiseul, & Aranda, and Tanucci. 251 

Beginning with Pombal, all the persecutors of the 
Society were of an equal moral standard, and this it 
is our concern to prove from non-Catholic sources. 

According to Christopher de Murr, the repentant 
Duke of Alba later made Charles III. a written 
avowal of the wrong committed by him in the affair of 
the Jesuits. 

Furthermore, he declared before the Archbishop of 
Salmanaca, "That he had fo7nented the riot of 'The 
Sombreros ' for the express purpose of attributing it to 
the Jesuits y Thus, we have before us the workings of a 
world absolutely devoid of truth, although the Spanish 
philosophers, far from being plebeian, like those of our 
nation, possessed each quarterings of nobility enough, 
and to spare. 

But there were other means needed beside the in- 
citing of mobs at Madrid, in order to destroy the 
sympathy which had existed between the zealous 
Catholic, Charles III., and the Society of Jesus. 

A third Protestant, the English historian, Coxe, lets 
us into the secret of a romantic manceuver which 
brings M. de Choiseul on the scene. 

From the year 1764, the French Minister* had en- 
tertained the idea of effecting the expulsion of the 
Society from the other countries, especially Spain. 



*" Spain under the kings of the House of Bourbon," Vol. 
V., p. 4. 



252 The Jesuits. 

Choiseul attributed to them every fault which he 
thought likely to bring about the disgrace of their 
Order. He had not the least scruple in circulating 
forged letters under the name of their General and the 
Superiors, and setting in circulation odious calumnies 
against certain individuals of the Society. 

In truth, these calumnies were rather directed 
against the king and against Elizabeth Farnese, his 
mother, wife of Philip Fifth. 

This brings us back to the epistle forged under the 
name of Father Ricci, General of the Society, by the 
Duke of Alba. It is evident that this intrigue pos- 
sessed powerful fomenters, and Coxe, in dividing the 
responsibilities, attributes to M. de Choiseul the accu- 
sation of illegitimacy, brought against Charles III. in 
the alleged correspondence of Father Ricci. 

I do not think that the falsity of these letters has 
been denied by a single historian, whether friendly or 
otherwise to the Society. The only difference is, that 
one Protestant attributes the work to the Duke of 
Alba, another to the French Minister. But the point 
is of little importance. 

Coxe speaks of another forged letter of the Father- 
General. " They forged a letter supposed to be writ- 
ten from Rome to the Spanish Provincial."* This letter 
ordered him to excite an insurrection ; it had been 



Ibid., p. 9. 



Choiseul, UAranda, and Tanucci. 253 

sent in such a manner as to be intercepted, and en- 
larged upon the subject of the immense riches and 
property of the Order. It was a stratagem by which 
to obtain its suppression. But the principal cause of 
their expulsion was the successful means employed to 
make the king believe that the insurrection at Madrid 
had been incited by them, and that they had fomented 
other machinations against himself and the royal 
family. 

Charles, but lately their zealous protector, became 
their most implacable enemy. He resolved " to take 
pattern by the French Government, and expel so 
dangerous a Society from his dominions." 

Thus, in the shame of having been obliged to flee, 
the shame of having been succored in his extremity, 
joined to that of having had his birth charged with ille- 
gitimacy, the haughty son of Philip Fifth was baited like 
a bull on all sides. The " picadores " of Paris and 
Madrid who tormented him were skillful in their work. 
The forged letters intended to excite his fears could 
have been dispensed with ; the wounds dealt to his 
vanity would have sufficed, 

A fourth Protestant, Ranke,* adds, however : 
" They persuaded Charles III. that the Jesuits wished 
to put his brother Don Luiz in his place," as they had 
endeavored to put Dom Pedro in the place of Joseph 



" History of the Papacy," IV., 494. 






254 The Jesuits. 

of Portugal ; when a falsehood works well why 
change it ? 

A fifth Protestant, Sismondi,* goes on : " The plots 
and counter-plots, slanderous accusations, forged let- 
ters, intended to be intercepted, and which were, in 
short, determined the resolution of the king." 

Finally, a sixth writer, the Englishman, Adam, al- 
though manifestly afraid of wounding the prejudices of 
the English, believes himself justified in questioning 
the truth of the guilt and bad intentions attributed to 
the Jesuits, and declares it " more natural to believe 
that a faction, hostile not only to their Institute, but to 
Christian religion in general, wrought a ruin to which 
the Governments lent themselves the more readily, 
as they thereby better served their own interests." 

We will pause at this half dozen of Protestant proofs. 
But there are others. 

Pombal, with the customary audacity of his nature, 
had usurped the office of justice, and created himself 
magistrate ; Choiseul, a better comedian, concealed 
himself in the side-scenes, and regulated the " mise en 
scene 11 of his Parliaments, on the judicial stages of Paris 
and the provinces. 

The Count d'Aranda employed no ceremony; some 
lines signed, " I, the King," and that matter was ar- 
ranged. 



* "History of the French," XXIX., 370. 



Ckoiseul, U Aranda, and Tanucci. 255 

With this authority, wrung from the error of a prince 
crazed with the fever of vengeance, the Spanish Minis- 
ter went to work, and surpassed in small and great 
cruelties Choiseul himself. Here, then, was manifest 
emulation. The hidalgo desired to rival the gentle- 
man, and show the authors of the " Encyclopedic," 
that the country of Ignatius of Loyola himself, after 
an infusion of " liberal ideas," could equal in its ex- 
cess the country of St. Vincent de Paul, doctored by 
" philanthropy ! " 

And the Count d'Aranda had not presumed upon his 
merits. In this campaign of persecution against un- 
armed Religious, who, far from resisting, prayed ardent- 
ly for their executioners, he displayed the valor of the 
Cid. 

Saving the wheel, the rack, and the funeral piles 
which distinguish more the genius of Pombal, Spain 
pushed philosophy to the most revolting and arbi- 
trary limits, and threw in a single day six thousand 
priests into the holds of ships, of which the greater 
part were unseaworthy, leaking in every part. They 
were obliged to disembark, the vessels having threat- 
ened to sink, even before they had put on sail. 

The same as in Portugal and in France, magnificent 
promises were made to any of the Society who would 
consent to abjure their vows. Is it necessary to add, 
that these promises were vain ? 

It would, indeed, be wonderful if in the peninsula 



256 The Jesuits. 

and throughout the colonies, containing more than six 
thousand Religious, there were not some desertions, 
but the number of these is so insignificant as to as- 
tonish the Protestant writers we have cited. 

We will not speak either of the patience of the 
victims, nor the gratuitous cruelty of their perse- 
cutors. 

To what purpose ? The world is well acquainted 
with both ; but we would say a word concerning the 
indemnity allowed to the Spanish Jesuits by Spain, 
who confiscated this immense wealth of the poor. 
Their action was little less ridiculous than that of the 
Parliaments of Choiseul in regard to the French Jesuits. 
Each Spanish Father received one hundred piastres a 
year, instead of the twenty, eighteen, or twelve sous, 
given each day to the Fathers of France, where the 
Exchequer received the benefit of more than sixty 
millions. Worse than all, it robbed only the poor ! 

The Pope, Clement XIII., who loved Charles III. 
with a tender affection, defended the Jesuits in Spain, 
as he had done in France and Portugal, but with 
equal ill success. 

The will of God went on, pursuing its way, of which 
none may know the merciful turns. 

Ferdinand IV., the Bourbon of Naples, naturally 
possessed a philosopher for a Minister. Bernard, 
Marquis de Tanucci, had been the factotum, while the 
latter was king of Naples. 



Ckoiseul, UAranda, and Tanucci. 257 

When Charles succeeded to the Spanish crown, 
and ceded Naples to his son Ferdinand, Tanucci re- 
mained the factotum of Ferdinand. The " Diction- 
aries " cite him as being one of the most determined 
enemies of the Church, and consequently worthy of 
the utmost consideration. Tanucci having dictated a 
mere " I, the king," to Ferdinand, who was but a boy, 
became instantly " a la mode " in choice places at 
Paris, and compares even with Ponibal, for the thor- 
ough brutality which he exhibited toward the Fathers, 
whom he expelled at the point of the sword. 

There was still another Bourbon besides him of 
Naples — the Duke of Parma, who was happy enough 
to possess, like all the rest, a Minister-Marquis-Philos- 
opher in du Tillot, Lord of Feiino. 

This statesman was particularly obscure, having no 
other claim to glory than that of having shown the 
Jesuits of Parma the door. That was sufficient. The 
" Dictionaries " inscribe his name in grateful re- 
membrance of the grain of sand which he brought 
to the revolutionary heap. He was a miniature 
Choiseul. 

As the authors of their common misfortune, the de- 
scendants of this most illustrious royal race in the 
world, while reviewing the past in order to better un- 
derstand the future, should execrate the names of 
those traitors, great and insignificant, who have in- 
jured the people still more than the kings. 
i7 



258 The Jesuits. 

All was over ; the Jesuits had no other asylum than 
Rome. 

And now all the Ministers of the deluded Bourbons, 
who were either blinded or lulled to slumber — Choiseul, 
Aranda, Tanucci, Felino, in complicity with Pombal — 
pointed the knife at the breast of the Pope. The ex- 
pression is not too strong, and do you believe that the 
martyrdom of Louis XVI. had nothing to expiate ? 

The Pope resisted, heroic and saintly old man, but 
he died because the measure of bitterness which had 
filled his long days was complete. 

He died, and his last look, full of prophetic sadness, 
was turned on these degenerate sons of St. Louis, tot- 
tering on their Catholic thrones. 

And Laurent Ganganelli, elected Sovereign Pontiff, 
destroyed the Bull of Paul III. 

The Society of Jesus fell without a murmur, dying, 
as it had lived, in perfect obedience. 

This page is perhaps the grandest and most touch- 
ing in the history of the Order. 

I might say here, that I reserve further mention of 
it for my other and more complete work, but this 
would be a falsehood ; I shall never re- write this page. 
Indeed, my respect for the chair of St. Peter is un- 
bounded 



VII. 

A LAST WORD. 

At the close of his excellent and truthful work, 
Cretineau-Joly declares, as a proof of his impartiality, 
that he is neither a friend, an admirer, nor an adver- 
sary of the Jesuits. 

They are to him, he affirms, merely what Vitellius, 
Otho, and Galba were to Tacitus. 

At the end of my hasty and incomplete little work, 
I declare on the contrary, that I admire and love the 
Jesuits. It is not necessary to be indifferent in order 
to be impartial, for beyond this neutral virtue of im- 
partiality, there is the Truth, which rules all. 

I speak the truth ; the truth which obliges us by the 
sovereign law of justice to expose the persecutor, and 
to avenge the unpersecuted good. A Christian has no 
need to state that he has no human interest which 
could induce him to deceive ; his interest is the law of 
God, which says to him, " Thou shalt not speak 
falsely," and all the human interests united would not 
excuse the transgression of this law. ■ 

(259) 



260 The Jesuits. 

To show one's colors is praiseworthy. Sincerity is 
the first of human virtues. 

I add, that to show one's colors, to loyally wear 
one's chosen cockade, is the first condition of imparti-. 
ality. Therefore, in declaring, " I love the Jesuits, and 
condemn their enemies," I at once declare my sincere 
convictions, and tear aside any veil that might obscure 
the sense of my judgments. 

This pleases me, because it obliges me all the more 
fully to show good and solid motives for my verdict. 

My principal wish in writing this book, after having 
rapidly sketched the mighty work of the Jesuits, was 
to outline also the dark and malignant workings of 
their enemies. I wished to show how, in every particu- 
lar, the men who have made the word " Jesuit" an 
insult, are themselves a portrait of the disloyal monster 
whom they call a Jesuit. 

This is the true state of affairs. 

I charge the Protestant writers with showing Tar- 
tufe Philosophy, or Jansenism, as alone guilty of the 
profligate actions, the plots of all the infamies in 
force, with which this king of hypocrites reproaches 
the posterity of Loyola. 

Pombal is the Tartufe -Tiger,* whom Pombal has 
not made, but M. de Choiseul, uniting all the Jesuits 
in the " case of conscience" of Madame de Pompa- 



Moliere's comedy of " Tartufe." 



A Last Word. 261 

dour, has the hands of the noble juggler, with fingers 
soft and white enough to allow him to feel, without 
making her blush, the stuff of the robe of Eimira ; * he 
is a comedian, this Minister who touches on the melo- 
drama, only in the days when he beheads Lally Tollen- 
dal. The remainder of the time, he confines himself 
to merely cutting the tail of the dog of Alcibiades, 
for the amusement of the Athenians while he ruins 
and dishonors Athens, as the punishment of those who 
had glorified and enriched him. 

Look well at the "Tartufe" of the Lexicon. Be- 
hold the Tartufe of the " Dictionnaires," the normal 
enemy of the Jesuits. Such is he who, looking into 
the depths of his own conscience as into a mirror, and 
seeing in the world none more accomplished than him- 
self in the tactics of hypocrisy, ordered a faithful like- 
ness of himself, and wrote beneath it " Jesuit," in 
order that the hate of the world might fall upon this 
expiatory manikin. 

It was not for Socinianism that the Jesuits were 
hunted, nor for Arianism, nor for Sabellianism, nor 
pn account of Tichonius, whose marvelously invented 
name procured at the Act of Parliament an immense 
amount of laughter, nor even on account of St. John 
the Baptist, nor Abraham ; the Jesuits were hunted 
because it was necessary to the little political farce of 



* Moliere's comedy of " Tartufe.' 



262 The Jesuits. 

Choiseul and Madame de Pompadour — Monsieur and 
Madame Tartufe — by which they satisfied their deadly 
hatred and juggled some millions. 

Are these things less true because they are uttered 
by a man who does not conceal his loathing for the 
actors in this infamous comedy, calumniators of their 
victims; and his admiration for the saints who beg of 
God the salvation of their executioners ? 

The blow which crushed the Jesuits rebounded on 
both sides ; their suppression left an immense void, 
but principally in religious instruction and education. 

The echo of this disaster penetrated to the confines 
of the universe, and was prolonged throughout the 
age. 

We hear the cry of sorrowful astonishment, not only 
among Christian writers, but in philosophical works 
and those of the University. Chateaubriand has no 
different sentiment from Fontaine ; Joubert writes as 
a Maistre, Lamenais as Voltaire, and Frederick of 
Prussia as Lally Tollendal. 

The learning of Europe has sustained an irreparable 
loss. 

Listen to the avowal, the lamentation of intelli- 
gence! Ah! how foreign to the Jesuits are the ac- 
cusations of darkness and ignorance. 

" There are among them," said Voltaire, u writers 
of rare merit, men of great learning, of vast eloquence, 
of genius." " The Jesuits/' adds d'Alembert, "are 



A Last Word. 263 

successful in all paths of learning, in eloquence, his- 
tory, antiquities, geometry, light and profound litera- 
ture ; there is hardly any class of writing in which they 
do not number men of great merit." 

Frederick II., writing to Voltaire, " that this Order 
had brought and supplied to France men of gigantic 
genius," declares to him " that he would preserve the 
precious seed to furnish those who would cultivate 
so rare a plant." 

Lalande does not pause with an eulogy of the Jesuits; 
he goes on to reproach their enemies " with having 
destroyed a Society which presented the most astonish- 
ing union of science and virtue that was ever known." 

" Carvalho (Pombal) et Choiseul," he adds, "have 
destroyed the greatest work of mankind, one with which 
no earthly establishment will ever compare ; object of 
my constant admiration, of my gratitude, and my re- 
gret." He goes on to avow " that he had formerly 
experienced a strong desire to enter this Order, and 
regretted not having followed a vocation that he owed 
to innocence and a taste for study." 

And Lally Tollendal : " The destruction of the 
Jesuits was the most arbitrary and tyrannical act that 
could be done ; it resulted in the disorder that always 
follows injustice, and made an incurable void in public 
education." 

A vast collection of these severe judgments pro- 
nounced against the murderers of the Society, might be 



264 The Jesuits. 

brought forward — judgments gathered from the most 
diverse sources, and signed by names most incongruous 
in their celebrity ; and, likewise, a volume of praises 
allowed to the works of the Institute. 

In their favorable testimony are united Jean Jacques 
Rousseau, Lamartine, Diderot, Talleyrand, Silvio 
Pellico, Jean de Muller ; Macaulay, who has written 
some fine pages on this subject ; Chaptal, Fontanes, 
and Dumouriez. But let us pause ; the task of collect- 
ing these passages is not familiar, and laborious ; and I 
fear the unskillful use which I make of these quota- 
tions may weary the reader. I will transcribe only 
some lines of Kern, the Professor of Gottingen, thus 
closing the array of Protestant judgments in favor of 
the Order. 

" The grandest minds and noblest hearts have ever 
been in favor of the Jesuits." 

Thus, Frederick the Great, when asked to expel 
them from his dominions, replied : " I know no better 
teachers for my Catholic subjects." 

Catherine, Francis Bacon, Hugh Grotius, Pierre 
Bayle, Leibnitz, Lessing, Herder, Ranke, and Becke- 
dorf, have all pronounced in favor of the Jesuits ; whilst 
the vilest minds and souls are ever violently opposed 
to them. 

Kern is in Germany one of the special luminaries. 

But the loss which intelligence sustained was com- 
paratively nothing by the side of the wrong done to 



A Last Word. 265 

morality, and which did much to hasten the overthrow 
of royalty. 

Ignatius of Loyola had created the Order in the 
sixteenth century for the special end, as he expressly 
declared, of opposing an imminent Revolution, and 
hardly was the Order born when the Revolution had 
indeed recoiled. 

This is not my assertion ; it is the testimony of the 
Revolution, or, rather, of the Revolutions, as well that 
which miscarried in the time of Luther, as that which 
rendered infamous the time of Marat. 

No partisan of the Jesuits can ever invest them 
with an importance equal to that which the hatred of 
their adversaries lends to them, not only in the past, 
but in our own day. 

What ! in our own day ! Are they, then, not dead, 
since they were so utterly exterminated with the axe, 
with the wheel, with exile, famine, the union of all 
those tortures previously known or invented for them ? 
Are they, then, like the trees of tropical regions, 
which, when cut, spread into forests ? Have they the 
gift of immortality ? 

Their death startled the world, and created an 
abyss. Beside their funeral pyres, arose a chorus of 
laments and acclamations which shook the two hemi- 
spheres ; and yet, behold ! in opening no matter 
what daily paper, heir of the " philosophic gazettes," I 
see that nothing has changed ; that they are still at 



266 The Jesuits. 

their old work, holding families slaves to their 
detestable power, oppressing the clergy, infecting 
Rome, tormenting Prussia, magnetizing Turkey, and 
finding time to cement, by the aid of truly infernal 
stratagems, hyperdramatic marriages between mys- 
terious demoiselles dowered with mysterious millions, 
and all the ancient Zouaves of the Pope. 

They have a few more colleges than formerly, and 
in their colleges a few more pupils. And, as Henry 
IV. expressed it, these pupils are their own ; you 
could exile them to America : their pupils would fol- 
low them there. 

It must be the influence of some spell worked by 
hellish art, for it may be truly said that the more these 
worthy journals exert themselves, proscribing, raving, 
and howling, the more obstinately do the fathers of 
families persist in their choice. 

I do not pretend to explain this. I only state it, 
and I further affirm that were these gentlemen of the 
penny journals, or the " reunion privee," to found 
some fine day their colleges (and why not ?) I, for 
one, to avert the influence of their education, would 
willingly send my children to the Jesuits of Timbuc- 
too ! 

As far as that goes, there are in France a very large 
number of bad fathers. There is no disputing tastes. 

But, after all, what has been the definitive result of 
all these unwholesome enormities committed — the 



A Last Word. 267 

Choisenl-Pompadour coalition, the league of pious 
Jansenists and Athenian Philosophers, the waste of 
money by poor President Roland and his associates, 
the ludicrous and. cruel decree of Parliament, the tooth- 
pick of M. de Chatelain and the foul atrocities of 
Pombal, the great " I, the King" of Aranda, the 
humbler "I, the King" of Tanucci, the microscopic 
" I, the Duke " of Felino, and all the other foul in- 
trigues and base barbarities? 

Nothing ! 

Is it not true that the Jesuits have never taken the 
trouble to defend themselves ? They die, and what 
happens ? The greater glory of God is seen. 

Their defense is not their duty ; it should be the 
duty of all those who do not wish to see again the 
disaste s which their fall ever announces and precedes. 
They are made to fall beneath the weight of the Cross. 
It is their happiness and their honor. They can pray 
here as well as there ; when their riches, amassed for 
the patriotic work of education and charity, are 
snatched from them, the wealth which is not theirs, 
but only amassed for the patriotic work of civilization, 
of education, of evangelization, wealth which they 
need not for themselves, it being incompatible with 
their vow of poverty ; they work in poverty, and are 
more than ever blessed. 

Only their work profits us less ; and whose the 
fault ? 



268 The Jesuits. 

For them the profit is ever the same ; God never 
changes the price of their day's labor. 

A day will come when those who call themselves 
" conservatives," to whatever shade of politics they 
belong, to those who scrutinize so earnestly the edu- 
cation of their sons by the Jesuits, will understand 
that the good of the Jesuits is their good and the good 
of their children ; that the existence and liberty of the 
Jesuits are the education and the future of their chil- 
dren ; that is to say, in a great measure the future and 
morality of France. 

When they understand this well — these conserva- 
tives — perhaps they will defend those who may not 
defend themselves. 

On the 7th of August, 1814, Pius VII. re-established 
the Society of Jesus throughout the world. 

The Order obeyed this mandate, which said to them, 
as of old Jesus said to Lazarus, " Arise, and walk." 

But did they, too, arise from a tomb ? Not entirely. 

The Order was dead through absolute obedience, 
but that its members were living we find striking 
proof in history. In 1775, one year after the death 
of the unfortunate king who had had M. de Choiseul 
for a Minister, in full view of Paris, of the University, 
of Parliament, and of Philosophy, Pere Beauregard, a 
Jesuit, mounted the pulpit of " Notre Dame," and you 
shall see that his voice was indeed that of a living 



A La$t Word. 269 

man ! He spoke, or rather prophesied, as follows : 
a It is to royalty, to religion, that the Philosophers are 
opposed. The axe and the hammer are in their hands. 
Your temples, O Lord, will be plundered and de- 
stroyed, your feasts abolished, your name blasphemed, 
your worship proscribed. To the holy canticles which 
resounded through the sacred arches shall succeed 
ribald and infamous chants. 

a And thou ! obscene divinity of Paganism, thou 
comest to usurp the place of the Eternal God, to seat 
thyself on the throne of the Holy of Holies, and re- 
ceive the perjured incense of thy blind adorers." 

Was it possible to announce more clearly than this, 
eighteen years in advance, the advent of the goddess of 
Reason, adored under the likeness of a Pompadour 
of the rabble, to foretell the hour when the blood of 
the members of Parliament, flowing in torrents, should 
expiate, if possible, the support they had lent to the 
enemies of the altar and the throne ? 

Non pravalebunt. Impiety has worked well ; the 
Jesuits are not immortal ; but they have not died. 
They have a promise of eternal martyrdom which is 
equivalent to immortality ; for it is necessary to live 
in order to suffer. 

Revive the Ministry of a Choiseul or a Pombal, or 
even place the reins of power in the hands of the sav- 
age offspring of those sons of nothingness, who by a 
mysterious reversal of the doctrines of Darwin, come 



270 The Jesuits. 

to beget apes ; they will lead the Jesuits to execution. 
Some miserable street Arab of Paris, marching behind 
Father Olivaint, who advances joyfully to heaven, will 
thrust his bayonet into the heel of his prisoner, sur- 
rounded by twenty guns, whose owners dare not fire, 
until in a deserted and wretched street they find cour- 
age to assassinate their victim. 

This is well ; this is what takes place : Olivaint 
passes into eternal life. 

Does this remind you of death ? 

The murderers themselves, perhaps, live to the hour 
so ardently prayed for by their victiui ; for he does 
pray for them, and especially for the poor unfortunate ; 
who, in his blind hatred, tears the flesh of his heel on 
the way to Calvary ; recommending him with an irre- 
sistible gesture to the pity of our Saviour. 

In these seeming deaths are unheard-of treasures of 
life, not only for the Jesuits, to whom life is nothing, 
but for France and for the world. 

So that after the sacrifice is consummated, the wound- 
ed country recovers and walks in the way bordered by 
abysses, as if a miraculous balance had been estab- 
lished between the deadly influences of crime and the 
vivifying merit of the martyrs. Devoted to preaching 
and instruction, thus they live. 

"You have a degree," said a skeptical friend of 
mine to his son, reluctantly confided to the Jesuits, 



A Last Word. 271 

upon the earnest entreaty of his Christian mother, 
"but what have they taught you ? " 

The youth remembered having formerly often 
shocked this excellent parent by a precocious spirit of 
revolt. " They have taught me," he answered, " to 
respect and love you." My worthy confrere in literary 
pursuits has not exactly become a partisan of the 
Jesuits, but at the time he related to me the foregoing 
anecdote, his eyes were full of tears. And his second 
son has been confided willingly to those masters who, 
without neglecting knowledge, teach also respect and 
love. 

I have not added virtue, for it is a word which has 
now only a comic meaning, exciting foolish laughter ; 
besides, it is a fact patent to the world that all the pu- 
pils of the Jesuits are not by any means saints. 

Voltaire was their pupil, and lived in days which 
were very evil, but when it was at least permitted to 
pronounce the word " virtue " without exciting the 
risibility of men. We have progressed since then, 
however, and if I dare make use of the word, while 
asking pardon for the liberty, it is because I take the 
word in Voltaire which he lets fall at every turn, when 
there is question of his former masters ; although im- 
planting a sting, he assumes a most reverential attitude. 

The least of the faults of the posterity of Voltaire 
is never to have read Voltaire, nor Rousseau, nor any 
noxious writings, save those of the "Almanachs." 



272 The Jesuits. 

I grant that Voltaire and Rousseau brought about 
the Revolution ; but even so, the Revolution made 
them celebrated, and in this, both parties were the 
victims of a mutual mistake, for the Revolution no 
more knew what it was doing in adoring Rousseau 
and Voltaire, than either of these knew what they did 
in preparing the Revolution. 

Voltaire was a thorough aristocrat, not to speak of 
his being a courtier ; and Rousseau proclaimed himself 
the most eloquent adversary of democracy in the 
" great countries." All the more would he tolerate 
the democratic Republic of Monaco. 

To return to the Jesuits. Whilst the posterity of 
Voltaire and of Rousseau vomit forth against them in 
invectives the French of the tavern, Voltaire emlpoys 
his admirable French in deploring their suppression (to 
which, however, his admirable French had helped not 
a little), and Rousseau, in still more magnificent 
language, peremptorily refuses to lend his support to the 
odious plots which united the bigots of Jansenism and 
the fanatics of Atheism against the solders of the true 
God, whom he respected without loving. 

But these things have been written one hundred 
times, and it is hardly worth while to re-write them. 
The tavern reads only the daily Almanachs, which serve 
up its repast of Jesuit (he whom Pombal carried horse- 
back on his nose), chopped up, and highly seasoned, in 



■ 

A Last Word. 273 

paragraphs, which would have made Voltaire or Rous- 
seau fly to the Antipodes. Such, and such alone, satis- 
fies the taste of the tavern. 

It is certainly a profound misfortune that the 
abasement of a whole people should be accomplished 
by two or three thousand political mercadets, who do 
not merit even the name of Tribunes. 

It may be said that they possess only one sense — the 
instinct of priest-hunting. The priest — or, as they say, 
the Jesuit — is to them the last barrier which opposes 
the final deluge of the " Almanachs," They believe 
that were the Jesuit dead, the deluge would naturally 
overwhelm the army, the Government, all property, 
capital, the arts, and literature, and the Almanach 
should become the sole government. 

It is apparent that they are, perhaps, right, as far as 
concerns a brief period at least The trials of this age, 
which had so bloody an inauguration, are not yet ter- 
minated ; there will be other martyrs. I say this age, 
because it is not centuries which divide the periods of 
the world, but rather the grouping of facts. The present 
cycle, made up of so much grandeur and so much 
ignominy, has lasted eighty-four years. As an age, we 
were born in "'93," and we are dying of the politics of 
the Almanach s, as our fathers expired of the philosophy 
of the " Dictionaries," 

Philosophy, that fluxion of intelligence, addressed 
itself to the masses by intelligent error. 



274 The Jesuits. 

The policy of the " Almanachs," paralyzed at heart 
and overloaded with egotism, eager to enjoy its power, 
brews for its numerous patrons an unknown beverage, 
an amalgamation of covetousness and hate, of passion 
and of promises which it has not had even the in- 
genuity to invent ; for they are a revival of the cheat- 
ing formulas in vogue among the demoniacs of the 
sixteenth centnr}', at the beginning of the disease with 
which the world was inoculated by Luther. 

The casks of this beverage, of Protestantism were 
already broached throughout Germany, Switzerland, 
England, and other places, at the time when Ignatius 
and his companions registered the Vow of Montmatre, 
It was against the Revolution, whose germ was di- 
vined in the lees of this beverage, that the pact was 
entered into. The Revolution, bursting forth in the 
fullness of time, instinctively hated these adversaries 
who had arrested its first movement and held it in 
check for hundreds of years, and that it one day 
crushed, to its own surprise, with the unlooked-for 
aid of kings, nobles and magistrates that it saw die 
— and that it finds arisen — living in the face of its 
victory. 

Thus the daily Almanachs, less polished than philos- 
ophy, and disdaining all metaphor, no longer cry, " Let 
us crush ' The Wretch/ v but shriek with one accord, 
" Down with the Jesuits ! " 

Only it is so evidently and so entirely the same 



A Last Word. 275 

thing, that the class of indifferentists are involuntarily 
obliged to reflect. 

Even as " The Wretch " comprehended, in point of 
fact, the throne, and all which appertained to the 
throne, so by the Jesuit of the Almanachs is understood 
first of all the Church, and then all which exists by 
the aid of the Church, although holding no allegiance 
to the Church, neither honoring her nor loving her — it 
may, even to a certain point, be hostile toward her ; 
that is to say, the administration, all administrations ; 
the government, all governments ; the academies, 
individual property, and even philosophy ; all, in short, 
which is not the " Almanach," nor the tavern ; all ex- 
cept the void made by greedy and blind demolition. 
All the world sees this, even the most short-sighted. 

This is assisted by an effort still far from effectual, but 
fairly in earnest. 

A movement has been begun which was delayed 
until the last moment, and then only aroused by a 
sight of the yawning precipice. 

The men who style themselves the " Conservatives," 
not because they defend in common some well-defined 
principles, but because they have, in short, something 
material to preserve — as the traveler uses every pre- 
caution to prevent his purse being stolen out of his 
pocket — these men, having watched attentively, have 
seen gathering. in their midst this disturbance of the 
class who have nothing to preserve, but who will take 



276 The Jesuits. 

all ; and even as the latter unite their forces for the 
purposes of ravage, the first seem vaguely inclined to 
band together for mutual protection. It is astonishing 
that they should have opened their eyes so late. For 
it is late. 

And time presses. 

And perhaps the mutual fear which binds these new 
confederates together is not a chain of great strength. 
Their interests, which are widely different, must con- 
flict, and some must be crushed and thrown to one 
side, along the road which they are pursuing. Not 
starting from the same point, they do not journey to- 
ward the same end ; while their enemies are united in 
a terrible similarity of purpose, second only in strength 
to the Unity of Good, of which it is the opposite and 
the negation, since they are bound together by Evil. 

That is a principle, negative, it is true, but absolute. 

God grant that the tardily formed and frail League of 
the Conservatives may find some absolute principle on 
which to rest ! The effort is good in itself ; it has al- 
ready. produced in France the result of clearly drawing 
the line of demarkation between those whose interest it 
is to demolish and those who wish to preserve, so that for 
the time there are but two parties in France — those who 
wish to destroy, and those who wish to avert destruction. 

Is that sufficient? To my mind, no; these coali- 
tions of interests are of short duration, resembling 
houses of which the stones are held together by no 



A Last Word. 277 

cement. The several interests become displaced, jos- 
tling against one another, and thus each becoming ob- 
structive to the rest. Ah ! how long has the cry been 
heard ! Again and again it is repeated, " We seek to 
unite respectable interests upon a common soil," and 
by it numerous apprehensions are always roused ; but 
few hopeful expectations. 

This phrase, " respectable interests," has already 
been in vogue some time, and I do not criticise it ; 
but I would ask, What epithet will henceforth charac- 
terize the disinterested? Shall they become con- 
temptible ? 

And this is not so idle a question as it appears. I 
am not what may be called a practical man, but I 
have studied pretty attentively the history of my own 
time, and also that of the past. I have seen that 
the disinterested alone have proved useful to their 
country and themselves, whilst all interests, were they 
" respectable," met their own ruin in that of their 
country. 

Carthage was encumbered with respectable interests, 
whilst Rome was inhabited by the disinterested. 

But this does not signify. We were treating only 
of the question of finding a common soil. In oppos- 
ing disinterestedness to interest, I had no other end 
than to facilitate the solution of the problem which 
seems to contain for our epoch a question of life and 
death. 



278 The Jesuits. 

There is no common soil capable of containing in- 
terests. Large as are the deserts of Africa, I defy you 
to place there two respectable interests which would 
not conflict. 

On the contrary, all soils are alike common to the 
disinterested. 

I do not go to the length of urging the interested to 
turn and walk in the way of self-abnegation, but I 
merely suggest to them with all the veneration which 
is their due, " If you wish a rallying point — and it is 
certain that you do, for in your disunion lies your weak 
point — do not seek the center where it is not. Be as 
little interested as you can, and as much disinterested 
as it is possible for you to be. 

" In order to distance one another in your competi- 
tions, you have the habit of conceding much to your 
common enemies ; concede to them no longer, and 
mutually increase the measure of concessions to what 
appear to you the wise and good. 

" These sacrifices in time of war are called discipline ; 
no army exists without discipline, and you are an 
army ; wherefore should you dispense with sacrifice ? 

" Who knows if you have more than one battle to 
fight ? In order to gain it, employ discipline. Your 
egotism is your weakness. Be disinterested in your 
own interest. 

" And seek attentively, find a chain which will mut- 
ually bind you ; seek for some cohesive force. It has 



A Last Word. 279 

a name, the greatest of all names, this rallying point, 
where the disinterested start from this vast center, 
where have been gained so many unhoped-for victories, 
but among us there are a large number of worthy 
hearts who have forgotten it. The Conservative army 
is almost as indifferent to this name as is that of the 
ravagers. 

" It is useful, however — and more than useful, it is 
necessary, it is essential — that this name should be 
heard above the combat ; for, since Constantme and 
Clovis, it has lost none of its all-powerful magic. Your 
rallying point is the Faith ; your standard — the only 
standard beneath which millions of opposed wills, di- 
verse passions, and contrary hopes can march cheer- 
fully and without collision in reconciliation and peace — 
is the Cross. By this sign you shall conquer. With- 
out it you shall be vanquished. Your enemies have 
everything on their side, save God. By what insanity 
do you not oppose God to your enemies ? . . . . 

" And retain all your army ; abandon none, not even 
the Jesuits, in the hour which precedes the conflict. 
Never, in return for the gifts that He presents to you 
with His hand ' full of riches,'* never sacrifice to the 
caress of the pagan ' Tartufe ' the men of Catholic edu- 
cation. Remember the exulting cries of the ' Encyclo- 



* " In quorum manibus inquitates sunt. Dertera eorum ie~ 
pkta est muneribus " 



280 The Jesuits. 

pedie/ at the time when the perverse counselors of 
Louis XV., by mowing down the Jesuits, killed at the 
root the young harvest of the future, and destroyed the 
balance maintained in France by education ! " 

I do not depreciate the glory of the University, but 
I say : " Alongside of the palace which doubts, must 
be the house which believes." 

It is a necessity of conscience. 

" They ceased to educate only when they ceased to 
exist. The Society of Jesus is among us, the great 
half of Christian education. As far as the Order it- 
self is concerned, I again repeat that it needs neither 
you nor me ; it is I, it is you who need it, for our 
children, for the France of the future. 

" Fathers of families, render to Caesar that which 
belongs to Caesar, faithfully, fully, but render to God 
that which belongs to God. In these unhappy days, 
it happens often, as you know, and have seen, that 
the pagan Tartu fe governs ; render him all; it is the law; 
but guard your conscience, your faith, and the educa- 
tion of your children. 

"That is your own, because it is God's. Whether 
the Atheist ' Tartufe ' smile, caress, or menace, be 
strong in the right ; in your hands is placed the trust 
of a family and of a country. 

" Frenchmen, defend France ; fathers, protect your 
children." 

I have finished, and this little preparative work is 



A Last Word. 281 

far from what I would wish, though it contains in 
germ all the ideas that I will later enlarge upon. It 
outlines the splendid birth of a mighty work opposed 
to the sinister origin of a great disaster. 

It indicates the way followed through an obedience 
which has never wavered ; it shows the heroic prayer 
of Loyola answered by the miracle of an unremitting 
and ceaseless persecution ; it shows how the sentinel 
body, furnished by the vow of Montmatre, has kept 
guard on the road of the Revolution, and that only on 
the day when it fell, stabbed at its post by those whom 
it guarded ; the Revolution could usurp the office of 
education, and so effect an entrance. 

The Order said to these honest people, alike to the 
indifferent and to the timorous, " Be brave, be vigi- 
lant, when the subject of education is in question, be- 
cause education is the breach through which your ruin 
always enters." It says to them still, " The people, 
the castes, the parties, who for their own preservation 
resign the sovereign right of choosing the teachers of 
their children, perish more quickly and die dishon- 
ored." 

This little book is not even an abridged history of 
the Society ; it is rather a page snatched from the list 
of crimes which go to make up the history of the ene- 
mies of the Company. In truth, we have endeavored 
to slightly sketch the learned persecutors, defended by 



282 The Jesuits. 

the " Dictionaries,' ' on the same ground as Julian 
the Apostate, their especial favorite. We have en- 
deavored to draw some likeness from nature, of 
tyrants devoted to their especial work, pausing at no 
falsehood, even the grossest that could be imagined, 
stopping at no crime, before no fraud, and flinging 
their mantle of infamy on the shoulders of the cruci- 
fied, and crying Ecce Homo ! Behold " The Wretch ! *' 

This is what a modern writer has termed the " re- 
verse maneuver," and which he characterizes thus : 
Tartufe-Judas encounters Jesus in a lonely place, 
kills Him, despoils Him, and nails on His chest his 
own name, " Judas." 

The trick is done, and behold the " Dictionaries," 
edified forevermore. 

We have all been more or less deluded by the jug- 
glings of Judas or Tartufe, we have all more or less 
trampled underfoot the twice assassinated body of Jus- 
tice, transformed into a malefactor by the industry of 
Caiaphas, of Herod, of Pombal, or of Choiseul, become 
the editors of our daily journals. 

And as the youth of the crowd is incurable, not- 
withstanding all evidence to the contrary, the name of 
him who has committed the crime is ever exalted by 
the crowd, whilst the daily blows are aimed against 
religion, right, authority, liberty, truth, honor, charity, 
even glory, in striking the victim " The Wretch!" 

This little book will not change all that. Happy if 



A Last Word. 283 

it be able, not to teach, but to recall to mind, all the 
grand things injured by the daily blows, and to those 
who still cherish these great things, that there is no 
more time to remain passive, nor to yield ; that the 
last possible concession is made to Judas, and that 
amongst the barriers which intervene between the 
young generation and barbarism, the highest, the most 
firm, and that which must be sustained even by those 
who love it not, is the wall of the House of Jesus. 




LEAVES FROM MY EXPERIENCE. . 

BY 

O. A. BROWHSOfl, LL.D. 

A. new revised edition, edited by his son, Henry F. Brownson. 1 
vol. 12mo, cloth extra, with portrait, $2 00. 

It is full of interest as it is, containing much useful information re* 
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vert at different times came in contact, with sketches of their several 
founders and chiefs. Passing through the experiences of Presbyteri* 
anism to become a Universalist, and a World Reformer and Humani- 
tarian, at last, after many vicissitudes, the earnest, single-hearted en- 
quirer obtained the blissful glimpse of the one truth. Like many 
another similarly favored, he could exclaim: 

1 * Darkness and doubt are now flying away, 
No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn— 
So breaks on the traveller, faint and astray, 
The bright and tbe balmy effulgence of morn/ 

—^London Catholic Begi&ter* 

We need not introduce this book to our readers. We are 
glad to see another edition called for. The experience? of such 
a mind as Brownson are of vital interest. "I have not addressed 
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Catholicity, and to enable the curious in such matters to discover the 
connecting link between my past and my present life, in order to en- 
able them to discover the connecting link between nature and grace, 
the natural and the supernatural, and to perceive that, in becoming a 
Catholic, a man has no occasion to divest himself of his nature, or to 
forego the exercise of his reason. ... I have aimed to write an in- 
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est to this history of a Protestant's adventures in search of a religion 
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steps through the maze. . . . 

"Taking it as a whole, we have liked the work exceedingly. It is well 
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search after a religion." — London Tablet. 

" This, as its title imports, is a controversial tale ; but it is also what 
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both in beauty of sentiment and grace of composition. It has none of the 
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author, in a truly beautiful and instructive preface, explains the scope of 
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thoughtful, studious men of the day, who having had instilled into their 
minds the divine right of private judgment, as the phrase is, have deter- 
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creed-maker. " ' Of course, the author is himself a convert, and therefore 
abundantly able to compose such a work in even a far more satisfactory 
manner than one to the manner born, and therefore happily ignorant of 
that unblissful gift, a mind working with religious fermentation.-— Catholic 
Record. 

" The book he has given us is the well- told tale of the trials, the strug 
gles, the difficulties through which one particular mind made its way from 
the darkness of doubt and uncertainty in Protestant negation into the 
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and Catholic dogma. It is told as a story, and is indeed more deeply in- 
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ism, that under one guise or another, has ever been the absorbing error 
of mankind ; Pantheism that has ever been the insidious foe of Catho* 
licity in all nations and in all times ; hence, the watchword that sounds 
through the pages of this book, " Catholicity or Pantheism ; all truth or 
no truth ; life or death. ' ' 



"This monstrous evil, Pantheism, being the natural enemy of Catholic 
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CHARACTERISTICS 

FBOM THE WRITINGS OF 

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Selections, Personal, Historical, Philosophical, and 
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'" In the following pages I have endeavored to give an account through 
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which have so largely exercised the intellect of this age, and which, even 
In the judgment of those who are unable to accept his conclusions, he has 
faced, investigated, and determined for himself with an unflinching 
courage, and an unswerving steadfastness of purpose, almost as rare 
perhaps as the high mental endowments which he has brought to the task. 
* * * * * In compiling my volume I have primarily endeavored 
to consult for readers who from want of leisure, or from other reasons, 
are unable to procure and peruse for themselves Dr. Newman's writings 
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